However remember people have paid for this already, proof that sometimes it is best to wait and see with a kickstarter idea.
I was trying to make this point earlier but it was rebuffed...
To be more precise, people have made a pledge and thus are allowed to make comments rather than just read them. Until the KS campaign ends a backer can always cancel their pledge. Nobody has paid anything yet.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Anyone else here have thoughts and opinions on this?
Well seeing as many of us homebrew our own planes and cosmology, and most campaigns take place largely on the material plane this is not exactly a reason to buy the system.
Anyone else here have thoughts and opinions on this?
They are changing Law vs Chaos to Nihilistic LE vs Nihilistic CE? Ummmm.... why?
Because one of the biggest complaints about the traditional Alignment grid is its powerful inherent bias towards LG, perhaps? It's always been a stretch, and a job of convincing the DM, to call anything else a proper player alignment, and the constraints that can place on some games are tight and uncomfortable. 'Orderly decay' versus 'chaotic corruption' at least frames a choice and removes some - not all, but some - of the inherent bias in the system.
Anyone else here have thoughts and opinions on this?
They are changing Law vs Chaos to Nihilistic LE vs Nihilistic CE? Ummmm.... why?
Because one of the biggest complaints about the traditional Alignment grid is its powerful inherent bias towards LG, perhaps? It's always been a stretch, and a job of convincing the DM, to call anything else a proper player alignment, and the constraints that can place on some games are tight and uncomfortable. 'Orderly decay' versus 'chaotic corruption' at least frames a choice and removes some - not all, but some - of the inherent bias in the system.
If anything, if it clarifies a specific way of handling alignment that can be helpful in the first place. 5E removed most of the practical consequences of alignments, but does a pretty poor job of explaining them and how to use them, if at all.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Anyone else here have thoughts and opinions on this?
They are changing Law vs Chaos to Nihilistic LE vs Nihilistic CE? Ummmm.... why?
Because one of the biggest complaints about the traditional Alignment grid is its powerful inherent bias towards LG, perhaps? It's always been a stretch, and a job of convincing the DM, to call anything else a proper player alignment, and the constraints that can place on some games are tight and uncomfortable. 'Orderly decay' versus 'chaotic corruption' at least frames a choice and removes some - not all, but some - of the inherent bias in the system.
The majority of my parties play Cotic Neutral or good, I know very few players who play lawful good. But, I dont really pay any attention to the allignment grid anyway, my whole issue with it is the binary approach it takes, an evil character gan do good acts and not become good and a good character can totally do something evil and not change alignment. I mean we are playing a game where "heros" regularly kill things and see the most horiffic acts without suffering any psycological issues lol. Alignment to me is a guide in sessio 0 for how will your character act in the first 30 mins, from then on it is about the oplayer feeling out and experiancing and doing things the character would do naturally in the situation, not sticking to some arbritary alignment
But, I dont really pay any attention to the allignment grid anyway, my whole issue with it is the binary approach it takes, an evil character gan do good acts and not become good and a good character can totally do something evil and not change alignment. I mean we are playing a game where "heros" regularly kill things and see the most horiffic acts without suffering any psycological issues lol. Alignment to me is a guide in sessio 0 for how will your character act in the first 30 mins, from then on it is about the oplayer feeling out and experiancing and doing things the character would do naturally in the situation, not sticking to some arbritary alignment
Well, alignment is supposed to drive action, not the other way around. Doing something that goes against your alignment doesn't change your alignment, it at most presupposes your alignment had shifted already. Which can totally happen, alignment isn't set in stone. But if you think of alignment as arbitrary, you should probably just drop it altogether. What the character would naturally do is a reflection of their alignment, that's pretty much by definition what alignment means.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
The problem of Law vs Chaos has always been more 'what the heck does it mean', not 'powerful incentive towards LG'. However, actually looking at their cosmology, I see no evidence that the Gyre vs the Far Realms is Law vs Chaos.
"Powerful?" pardon, but what benefits does it give over other alignments, exactly? LG certainly gives none in 5e.
Even in earlier editions the only way that would be is if Paladins were somehow OP, but never heard any such accusation, particularly given the traditional strict requirements to stay within LG, which, again traditionally, was far more often a straight jacket as any benefit whatsoever.
And replacing them with two different flavours of evil? Sounds more like just biasing everything towards evil. What are they doing with the good / evil axis? Changing that up by making it about the freedom of goodness vs the necessary justice?
I don't mean mechanically powerful. I mean the system is inherently, strongly, biased towards Lawful Good. You can tell because the entire system is described as if from the perspective of a Lawful Good individual. The other axes are "Chaos" and "Evil", and all of the language around the system presupposes the core ideal that the further you stray from LG< the further you stray from the True And Proper Way. 'Evil' alignments are outlawed altogether at most tables and in Adventurer's League, which makes it plain that the furhter from 'Good' you stray the worse of a person you are, and the system also assumes anyone with a Chaotic alignment is actively at odds with and working against society.
'Orderly decay' vs 'Chaotic corruption' at least intimates at the fact that Law/Order is not an unabashed, unqualified, always-da-bess good, just like attempts to reframe the Good/Evil axis as "serves others vs. serves self" tries to intimate that there's benefits and drawbacks to both ends of that axis.
Not that this is supposed to be the thirteen millionth thread on alignment nonsense, but hey. Why not, eh?
Anyone else here have thoughts and opinions on this?
They are changing Law vs Chaos to Nihilistic LE vs Nihilistic CE? Ummmm.... why?
Because one of the biggest complaints about the traditional Alignment grid is its powerful inherent bias towards LG, perhaps? It's always been a stretch, and a job of convincing the DM, to call anything else a proper player alignment, and the constraints that can place on some games are tight and uncomfortable. 'Orderly decay' versus 'chaotic corruption' at least frames a choice and removes some - not all, but some - of the inherent bias in the system.
"Powerful?" pardon, but what benefits does it give over other alignments, exactly? LG certainly gives none in 5e.
Even in earlier editions the only way that would be is if Paladins were somehow OP, but never heard any such accusation, particularly given the traditional strict requirements to stay within LG, which, again traditionally, was far more often a straight jacket as any benefit whatsoever.
And replacing them with two different flavours of evil? Sounds more like just biasing everything towards evil. What are they doing with the good / evil axis? Changing that up by making it about the freedom of goodness vs the necessary justice?
It's not an issue of power in terms of rule advantage. it's an issue of power in terms of the overall meta-narrative of the cosmology. classical DND very much rated the measure ofa hero as how far they were away from Lawful Good.
But I don't think the 5.5 model does a damn thing to fix it.
The fact that D&D has always been biased towards "Evil is Bad" doesn't concern me, as it's sort of a tautology. Law=Good, Chaos=Evil was a thing in early D&D and made a bit of a resurgence in 4th edition (which had only LG, G, N, E, and CE) but I wouldn't call it a general bias in D&D.
In general Law has been the alignment of civilization; outside of anomalies like the drow, if it has big cities, police, courts, standing armies, and so on, it's probably lawful; if it's a bunch of rugged individualists or smaller groups it's chaotic. If the campaign is something like a 4th edition 'points of light' where you're protecting pockets of civilization against the howling hordes, sure, good and lawful probably go together, but if you're heroic rebels in an insurrection against the Evil Empire you're probably looking at CG vs LE.
The fact that the Forgotten Realms doesn't really have a good location or candidate for Oppressive Evil Empire is one of the flaws of the setting -- it's because the setting is unwilling to let evil have large scale victories.
"Powerful?" pardon, but what benefits does it give over other alignments, exactly? LG certainly gives none in 5e.
Even in earlier editions the only way that would be is if Paladins were somehow OP, but never heard any such accusation, particularly given the traditional strict requirements to stay within LG, which, again traditionally, was far more often a straight jacket as any benefit whatsoever.
And replacing them with two different flavours of evil? Sounds more like just biasing everything towards evil. What are they doing with the good / evil axis? Changing that up by making it about the freedom of goodness vs the necessary justice?
I don't mean mechanically powerful. I mean the system is inherently, strongly, biased towards Lawful Good. You can tell because the entire system is described as if from the perspective of a Lawful Good individual. The other axes are "Chaos" and "Evil", and all of the language around the system presupposes the core ideal that the further you stray from LG< the further you stray from the True And Proper Way. 'Evil' alignments are outlawed altogether at most tables and in Adventurer's League, which makes it plain that the furhter from 'Good' you stray the worse of a person you are, and the system also assumes anyone with a Chaotic alignment is actively at odds with and working against society.
'Orderly decay' vs 'Chaotic corruption' at least intimates at the fact that Law/Order is not an unabashed, unqualified, always-da-bess good, just like attempts to reframe the Good/Evil axis as "serves others vs. serves self" tries to intimate that there's benefits and drawbacks to both ends of that axis.
Not that this is supposed to be the thirteen millionth thread on alignment nonsense, but hey. Why not, eh?
Evil is, well, evil and half the players out there seem to think chaotic is what you play when you want to play evil without admitting it by putting "evil" on your character sheet.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
"Powerful?" pardon, but what benefits does it give over other alignments, exactly? LG certainly gives none in 5e.
Even in earlier editions the only way that would be is if Paladins were somehow OP, but never heard any such accusation, particularly given the traditional strict requirements to stay within LG, which, again traditionally, was far more often a straight jacket as any benefit whatsoever.
And replacing them with two different flavours of evil? Sounds more like just biasing everything towards evil. What are they doing with the good / evil axis? Changing that up by making it about the freedom of goodness vs the necessary justice?
I don't mean mechanically powerful. I mean the system is inherently, strongly, biased towards Lawful Good. You can tell because the entire system is described as if from the perspective of a Lawful Good individual. The other axes are "Chaos" and "Evil", and all of the language around the system presupposes the core ideal that the further you stray from LG< the further you stray from the True And Proper Way. 'Evil' alignments are outlawed altogether at most tables and in Adventurer's League, which makes it plain that the furhter from 'Good' you stray the worse of a person you are, and the system also assumes anyone with a Chaotic alignment is actively at odds with and working against society.
'Orderly decay' vs 'Chaotic corruption' at least intimates at the fact that Law/Order is not an unabashed, unqualified, always-da-bess good, just like attempts to reframe the Good/Evil axis as "serves others vs. serves self" tries to intimate that there's benefits and drawbacks to both ends of that axis.
Not that this is supposed to be the thirteen millionth thread on alignment nonsense, but hey. Why not, eh?
I think this part is a completely separate issue that is more about players than the D&D alignment system. In my own personal experience, the venn diagram of players that play "evil" characters and players that are disruptive has a lot of over lap.
Evil is, well, evil and half the players out there seem to think chaotic is what you play when you want to play evil without admitting it by putting "evil" on your character sheet.
Yeah, a lot of players think chaotic means license to be an ******* and call it 'just playing my character' whereas evil means edgelord, Yo!. I honestly consider the default alignment of PCs in a heroic campaign be CG, as in my experience very few PC parties are overly concerned about whether what they're doing is actually legal, properly justified by the evidence, etc.
Evil is, well, evil and half the players out there seem to think chaotic is what you play when you want to play evil without admitting it by putting "evil" on your character sheet.
Yeah, a lot of players think chaotic means license to be an ******* and call it 'just playing my character' whereas evil means edgelord, Yo!. I honestly consider the default alignment of PCs in a heroic campaign be CG, as in my experience very few PC parties are overly concerned about whether what they're doing is actually legal, properly justified by the evidence, etc.
DND has been primarily a game of murder hobos so I would say the default alignment is chaotic evil.
I actually prefer the original warhammer approach, that lawful meant stagnant no change, no evolution, no development. Everything just stayed the same and Chaotic meant just that, chaos, constant change and flux nothing ever consistent. The idea was the perfect system held a balance. You then applied your good, neutral evil to that, but even then too much good would create just as unbalanced a society as too much evil.
Evil is, well, evil and half the players out there seem to think chaotic is what you play when you want to play evil without admitting it by putting "evil" on your character sheet.
Yeah, a lot of players think chaotic means license to be an ******* and call it 'just playing my character' whereas evil means edgelord, Yo!. I honestly consider the default alignment of PCs in a heroic campaign be CG, as in my experience very few PC parties are overly concerned about whether what they're doing is actually legal, properly justified by the evidence, etc.
DND has been primarily a game of murder hobos so I would say the default alignment is chaotic evil.
That's relative. It hasn't been primarily a murderhobo game for me, over 30+ years. A decent chunk of it, sure, but not the major part.
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Chaos and Evil are endpoints, not axises..... and 'Orderly decay' vs 'Chaotic corruption' substitutes the concept that societies have rules intended for the public good with everything is going to end badly, one way or another. It is nihilism. Guess what, heroes? No matter what you do, in the end you will lose. Not sure how that is any sort of selling point....
The concept that societies have rules intended for the public good is that LG perspective you are ranting about, even though it is actually the basis of pretty much every modern society in the world today, despite the ongoing debate about how much and what kinds of laws and controls over society are truly good, something not appropriate to dive into here, but I'll happily discuss with you if you wish to PM me.
It's my thread, I do what I want. Hueh.
Fair cop on the 'chaos and evil are endpoints, not axes' thing, but the point remains. LG assumes that all rules and laws are 'for the public good'. The tyrannical hyper-authoritarian Kingdom of Warringland which has transformed its populace into an obedient indentured workforce designed to supply its armies and aggressively expand is just as 'LG' as the neighboring Realm of Niceguyton. Players and DMs who insist that LG is the only truly 'Heroic' alignment are basically recreating the Avengers Civil War bit. The average schmuck acts within the law because they have no choice, no impact, and no power. When individuals of exceptional means, power, and fortune see a problem they know they can correct, should they wait to be dispatched by the King? Should they stay their hands and act only as the king requires and empowers them to act, even when doing so brings ruination to the people? Should they be nothing more than the king's echoes, ignoring their own ability to help? Or should they act, swiftly and decisively, within their means and their initiative...even when doing so brings ruination to the people? Should they trust their own insight and abilities over those of an entire kingdom and undermine the very land they seek to protect by disregarding the King's authority?
Heh. One may be able to guess that I detest the original nine-box alignment grid and consider it absolutely pants-on-hands worthless for literally any function not directly related to old-fashioned Great Wheel cosmology. Part of this is because I hold a conviction, as do pretty much all of my characters, that if you see a problem it is within your means to address and you choose deliberately not to address it, you are now the cause of that problem as much as the original source of the problem is. Don't wait eight months for the King and his court to deliberate and hem and haw and power-struggle and politick and play reindeer games, the way they always ******* do, when demons are overrunning your town and eating your doods. Get your Doom Guy on and merder those deemuns.
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To be more precise, people have made a pledge and thus are allowed to make comments rather than just read them. Until the KS campaign ends a backer can always cancel their pledge. Nobody has paid anything yet.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Well, Level Up just unveiled the base setting of their system's cosmology. It certainly looks interesting, and I'm excited to see the axis of "Law versus Chaos" becoming the "Orderly decay of everything versus the maddening corruption of the Far Realm".
Anyone else here have thoughts and opinions on this?
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Well seeing as many of us homebrew our own planes and cosmology, and most campaigns take place largely on the material plane this is not exactly a reason to buy the system.
Because one of the biggest complaints about the traditional Alignment grid is its powerful inherent bias towards LG, perhaps? It's always been a stretch, and a job of convincing the DM, to call anything else a proper player alignment, and the constraints that can place on some games are tight and uncomfortable. 'Orderly decay' versus 'chaotic corruption' at least frames a choice and removes some - not all, but some - of the inherent bias in the system.
Please do not contact or message me.
If anything, if it clarifies a specific way of handling alignment that can be helpful in the first place. 5E removed most of the practical consequences of alignments, but does a pretty poor job of explaining them and how to use them, if at all.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
The majority of my parties play Cotic Neutral or good, I know very few players who play lawful good. But, I dont really pay any attention to the allignment grid anyway, my whole issue with it is the binary approach it takes, an evil character gan do good acts and not become good and a good character can totally do something evil and not change alignment. I mean we are playing a game where "heros" regularly kill things and see the most horiffic acts without suffering any psycological issues lol. Alignment to me is a guide in sessio 0 for how will your character act in the first 30 mins, from then on it is about the oplayer feeling out and experiancing and doing things the character would do naturally in the situation, not sticking to some arbritary alignment
Well, alignment is supposed to drive action, not the other way around. Doing something that goes against your alignment doesn't change your alignment, it at most presupposes your alignment had shifted already. Which can totally happen, alignment isn't set in stone. But if you think of alignment as arbitrary, you should probably just drop it altogether. What the character would naturally do is a reflection of their alignment, that's pretty much by definition what alignment means.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
The problem of Law vs Chaos has always been more 'what the heck does it mean', not 'powerful incentive towards LG'. However, actually looking at their cosmology, I see no evidence that the Gyre vs the Far Realms is Law vs Chaos.
I don't mean mechanically powerful. I mean the system is inherently, strongly, biased towards Lawful Good. You can tell because the entire system is described as if from the perspective of a Lawful Good individual. The other axes are "Chaos" and "Evil", and all of the language around the system presupposes the core ideal that the further you stray from LG< the further you stray from the True And Proper Way. 'Evil' alignments are outlawed altogether at most tables and in Adventurer's League, which makes it plain that the furhter from 'Good' you stray the worse of a person you are, and the system also assumes anyone with a Chaotic alignment is actively at odds with and working against society.
'Orderly decay' vs 'Chaotic corruption' at least intimates at the fact that Law/Order is not an unabashed, unqualified, always-da-bess good, just like attempts to reframe the Good/Evil axis as "serves others vs. serves self" tries to intimate that there's benefits and drawbacks to both ends of that axis.
Not that this is supposed to be the thirteen millionth thread on alignment nonsense, but hey. Why not, eh?
Please do not contact or message me.
It's not an issue of power in terms of rule advantage. it's an issue of power in terms of the overall meta-narrative of the cosmology. classical DND very much rated the measure ofa hero as how far they were away from Lawful Good.
But I don't think the 5.5 model does a damn thing to fix it.
The fact that D&D has always been biased towards "Evil is Bad" doesn't concern me, as it's sort of a tautology. Law=Good, Chaos=Evil was a thing in early D&D and made a bit of a resurgence in 4th edition (which had only LG, G, N, E, and CE) but I wouldn't call it a general bias in D&D.
In general Law has been the alignment of civilization; outside of anomalies like the drow, if it has big cities, police, courts, standing armies, and so on, it's probably lawful; if it's a bunch of rugged individualists or smaller groups it's chaotic. If the campaign is something like a 4th edition 'points of light' where you're protecting pockets of civilization against the howling hordes, sure, good and lawful probably go together, but if you're heroic rebels in an insurrection against the Evil Empire you're probably looking at CG vs LE.
The fact that the Forgotten Realms doesn't really have a good location or candidate for Oppressive Evil Empire is one of the flaws of the setting -- it's because the setting is unwilling to let evil have large scale victories.
Evil is, well, evil and half the players out there seem to think chaotic is what you play when you want to play evil without admitting it by putting "evil" on your character sheet.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I think this part is a completely separate issue that is more about players than the D&D alignment system. In my own personal experience, the venn diagram of players that play "evil" characters and players that are disruptive has a lot of over lap.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Yeah, a lot of players think chaotic means license to be an ******* and call it 'just playing my character' whereas evil means edgelord, Yo!. I honestly consider the default alignment of PCs in a heroic campaign be CG, as in my experience very few PC parties are overly concerned about whether what they're doing is actually legal, properly justified by the evidence, etc.
DND has been primarily a game of murder hobos so I would say the default alignment is chaotic evil.
I did specify 'heroic campaign'. A murder-hobo campaign does generally default to chaotic evil.
I actually prefer the original warhammer approach, that lawful meant stagnant no change, no evolution, no development. Everything just stayed the same and Chaotic meant just that, chaos, constant change and flux nothing ever consistent. The idea was the perfect system held a balance. You then applied your good, neutral evil to that, but even then too much good would create just as unbalanced a society as too much evil.
I would argue it generates down usually to chaotic neutral because usually DMs feed there murder hobo characters NPCs and monsters that deserve death.
That's relative. It hasn't been primarily a murderhobo game for me, over 30+ years. A decent chunk of it, sure, but not the major part.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
It's my thread, I do what I want. Hueh.
Fair cop on the 'chaos and evil are endpoints, not axes' thing, but the point remains. LG assumes that all rules and laws are 'for the public good'. The tyrannical hyper-authoritarian Kingdom of Warringland which has transformed its populace into an obedient indentured workforce designed to supply its armies and aggressively expand is just as 'LG' as the neighboring Realm of Niceguyton. Players and DMs who insist that LG is the only truly 'Heroic' alignment are basically recreating the Avengers Civil War bit. The average schmuck acts within the law because they have no choice, no impact, and no power. When individuals of exceptional means, power, and fortune see a problem they know they can correct, should they wait to be dispatched by the King? Should they stay their hands and act only as the king requires and empowers them to act, even when doing so brings ruination to the people? Should they be nothing more than the king's echoes, ignoring their own ability to help? Or should they act, swiftly and decisively, within their means and their initiative...even when doing so brings ruination to the people? Should they trust their own insight and abilities over those of an entire kingdom and undermine the very land they seek to protect by disregarding the King's authority?
Heh. One may be able to guess that I detest the original nine-box alignment grid and consider it absolutely pants-on-hands worthless for literally any function not directly related to old-fashioned Great Wheel cosmology. Part of this is because I hold a conviction, as do pretty much all of my characters, that if you see a problem it is within your means to address and you choose deliberately not to address it, you are now the cause of that problem as much as the original source of the problem is. Don't wait eight months for the King and his court to deliberate and hem and haw and power-struggle and politick and play reindeer games, the way they always ******* do, when demons are overrunning your town and eating your doods. Get your Doom Guy on and merder those deemuns.
Please do not contact or message me.