I've been DMing for about a year and half now with various groups. I have started OotA for my favorite group. I chose this adventure as I like the dynamic of madness and character development. Most of the players have created characters with neutral alignments or nondescript alignments. The players themselves have different opinions about right and wrong, ethics, and morality.
How much emphasis should I put on alignment to determine how a character would typically act in a given situation? Should I let the player improvise in the situation or should I get some sort of core belief system for each character that would determine a likely course of action? I want this adventure to be enjoyable and I hope that roleplaying scenarios where the core beliefs of the characters might change could be fun.
I think you should definitely have your players clarify their characters' belief systems, but that should be more for them than for you. Having players who have thought through their characters' beliefs will only help your game. That said, I don't think you should ever prevent a player from taking a course of action because their alignment wouldn't allow for it.
I think in-game consequences are more appropriate for significant deviations from alignment, and I'll discuss examples that mostly have to do with good-acting-evil PCs, because I think that's where the biggest potential for difficulty lies.
If your good or neutral party starts acting evil, maybe NPCs with high passive insight become instinctively less trusting of the party, DCs for persuasion checks to gain allies become are set higher, and NPCs tend to fear or shy away from them for unexplained reasons.. Maybe they develop a reputation as word of their evil actions spreads, and they attract more attention from the law when they're in civilization as a result.
You can also work in character story and features. If your Lawful Good Paladin becomes a murder-hobo, consider how her deity might frown upon those actions. Does her goddess send her visions and warnings trying to push her back onto the right path? If she ignores the warnings (and I'll stress that you have to be very careful before going this route) does the goddess revoke certain powers as punishment? Maybe the Paladin finds that her Channel Divinity or Divine Smite don't quite work the next time that she calls upon them? If she pushes past a point of no-return, you might have an out of game conversation with the player about changing subclasses and becoming an Oathbreaker, stressing that if she doesn't right her ship soon then she might not have a choice.
I also tend to view alignment not only as a personal code, but also as sort of a cosmic ordering of the universe, and a reflection of how the universe views your character as an individual. In 5e there are tons of alignment-related items and features. Perhaps your players have a magic item that must be attuned to by a creature of non-evil alignment. Take too many evil actions, and one day you can't use the features of your weapon. For an example from my game, the party just made the decision to wipe out an entire colony of werebats, including the defenseless babies in the nursery, instead of seeking alternate solutions to their problem. Now, the next time the Lawful Neutral Cleric casts Spirit Guardians, his Spirit Guardians will appear as tiny fiends instead of the angelic fey that he's used to. The spell remains the same, but he gets a hint that something about his role in the cosmic order is off.
I think that your role as the DM should be left to determining the consequences of characters' actions, but leaving them free to do as they please. Calling out PCs for not acting according to their alignment should best be left to other PCs, and should happen as conversations between characters.
I don't think you should ever prevent a player from taking a course of action because their alignment wouldn't allow for it.
Strongly agreed, but I turn the sentence around.
I don't restrict players actions based on alignment because I judge aligmnent based on actions.
It doesn't matter what a player writes on the character sheet; if the character is repeatedly performing evil actions and showing no signs of remorse or guilt or conflict, then the character is evil. Same for good, law, chaos, whatever.
Alignment is a description. If the alignment says one thing but the character acts another way, then the description is wrong and needs to change. In other words, if the player wrote CG on the sheet but they play the character as LE, then you should tell them to change the alignment on the character sheet.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Thanks for the feedback! I'm gonna have to start using this forum more often....
All of my players are interested in expanding their roleplaying and I thought that exploring their alignments was a good starting point. Based on this advice, I'm going to take into account their actions to determine their alignment, let the world reflect those alignments, and let the players make whatever decisions that they wish. I believe that emphasizing alignment to decide what a character would do is backwards based on the feedback. I figure the players will have enough to work with once their characters start gaining madness!
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Hi all,
I've been DMing for about a year and half now with various groups. I have started OotA for my favorite group. I chose this adventure as I like the dynamic of madness and character development. Most of the players have created characters with neutral alignments or nondescript alignments. The players themselves have different opinions about right and wrong, ethics, and morality.
How much emphasis should I put on alignment to determine how a character would typically act in a given situation? Should I let the player improvise in the situation or should I get some sort of core belief system for each character that would determine a likely course of action? I want this adventure to be enjoyable and I hope that roleplaying scenarios where the core beliefs of the characters might change could be fun.
Thanks for any feedback!
I think you should definitely have your players clarify their characters' belief systems, but that should be more for them than for you. Having players who have thought through their characters' beliefs will only help your game. That said, I don't think you should ever prevent a player from taking a course of action because their alignment wouldn't allow for it.
I think in-game consequences are more appropriate for significant deviations from alignment, and I'll discuss examples that mostly have to do with good-acting-evil PCs, because I think that's where the biggest potential for difficulty lies.
If your good or neutral party starts acting evil, maybe NPCs with high passive insight become instinctively less trusting of the party, DCs for persuasion checks to gain allies become are set higher, and NPCs tend to fear or shy away from them for unexplained reasons.. Maybe they develop a reputation as word of their evil actions spreads, and they attract more attention from the law when they're in civilization as a result.
You can also work in character story and features. If your Lawful Good Paladin becomes a murder-hobo, consider how her deity might frown upon those actions. Does her goddess send her visions and warnings trying to push her back onto the right path? If she ignores the warnings (and I'll stress that you have to be very careful before going this route) does the goddess revoke certain powers as punishment? Maybe the Paladin finds that her Channel Divinity or Divine Smite don't quite work the next time that she calls upon them? If she pushes past a point of no-return, you might have an out of game conversation with the player about changing subclasses and becoming an Oathbreaker, stressing that if she doesn't right her ship soon then she might not have a choice.
I also tend to view alignment not only as a personal code, but also as sort of a cosmic ordering of the universe, and a reflection of how the universe views your character as an individual. In 5e there are tons of alignment-related items and features. Perhaps your players have a magic item that must be attuned to by a creature of non-evil alignment. Take too many evil actions, and one day you can't use the features of your weapon. For an example from my game, the party just made the decision to wipe out an entire colony of werebats, including the defenseless babies in the nursery, instead of seeking alternate solutions to their problem. Now, the next time the Lawful Neutral Cleric casts Spirit Guardians, his Spirit Guardians will appear as tiny fiends instead of the angelic fey that he's used to. The spell remains the same, but he gets a hint that something about his role in the cosmic order is off.
I think that your role as the DM should be left to determining the consequences of characters' actions, but leaving them free to do as they please. Calling out PCs for not acting according to their alignment should best be left to other PCs, and should happen as conversations between characters.
"To die would be an awfully big adventure"
Strongly agreed, but I turn the sentence around.
I don't restrict players actions based on alignment because I judge aligmnent based on actions.
It doesn't matter what a player writes on the character sheet; if the character is repeatedly performing evil actions and showing no signs of remorse or guilt or conflict, then the character is evil. Same for good, law, chaos, whatever.
Alignment is a description. If the alignment says one thing but the character acts another way, then the description is wrong and needs to change. In other words, if the player wrote CG on the sheet but they play the character as LE, then you should tell them to change the alignment on the character sheet.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Thanks for the feedback! I'm gonna have to start using this forum more often....
All of my players are interested in expanding their roleplaying and I thought that exploring their alignments was a good starting point. Based on this advice, I'm going to take into account their actions to determine their alignment, let the world reflect those alignments, and let the players make whatever decisions that they wish. I believe that emphasizing alignment to decide what a character would do is backwards based on the feedback. I figure the players will have enough to work with once their characters start gaining madness!