alignment is bad and you should feel bad

[Max_Killjoy]

The actual ideas I am equating to such are "in-game morality necessarily reflects the players' real life morality!" and "in-game morality must be so-and-so because I don't want other people to mistake in-game morality for my real morality!"

The specific forms these take vary, but are at the root of all moral alarmism.

Examples:

"The characters in a D&D game worship pagan gods and devils, so the players must be Anti-Christian!"

"I don't want to be seen as Anti-Christian, so lets remove all real gods and demons from the game!"

"Video games are violent, so the players must think violence against other humans is acceptable!"

"I don't want to be seen as a violent person, let's remove all violence from video games!"

"D&D distinquishes characters based on class, race and sex, so the players must be classist, sexist and racist!"

"I don't want to be seen as classist, racist or sexist, so lets remove classes and make all races and sexes equal!"

"This movie has women, homosexuals and black people in lead roles, so the creators must be deplorable cucks!"

"I don't want to be seen as a deplorable cuck, so lets have more movies with straight white men in the lead!"

"This game has swastikas, NAZIS! NAZIS EVERYWHERE!"

"I want nothing to do with nazis, lets remove all swastikas and symbols that even roughly look like it from everything ever, including the Jainist flag."

So on and so forth.

None of the examples are hypothetical.

So, remind me... what sort of qualms did you have again?

Was it "alignment uses good versus evil for us versus them, so people who use alignment are endorsing tribalism"?

Or "I don't want to be seen as a tribalist, so lets remove alignment from games"?

I don't think it was.

How about "this reminds me too much of the rotten garbage that certain people spout in real life, let's not have it in the game too"?

[Frozen_Feet]

If someone is playing GTA and going on a killing spree... and thinks they are playing the "good guy", I will be scared of that person in the real world. If that person knows they are playing a "bad guy", and just playing to get away from the real world and let off steam, then that's a totally different story.

And what you don't seem to get about them is that majority of people who argue that they're playing the "good guy" also know they're playing a bad guy. They can hold these apparently contradictory beliefs because they know in-game morality =/= real world morality. It's why in Existential Comic's D&D gag, Immanuel Kant is the only player who is totally on ball with killing the orcs.

For example, a person who argues they're playing the "good guy" in GTA might argue so because they're the protagonist, or because they care about their family, or because they kill worse criminals. If you then get upset and point out that "running over civilians" thing, you're not telling them anything they don't know. They agree that running over civilians is bad in real life, but they're discounting that because the point of the game is to play a heinous criminal and those NPCs don't matter anyway.

As another example, Legend of Zelda games often allow Link, the player character, to engage in all manner of bad stuff, like stealing, breaking property, lazing around while the world is burning or beating innocent animals. Players know this, as evidenced by 1001 jokes about Link being a speech-impaired sociopath. Next to nobody seriously disputes that Link is a hero, however, because his actual relevant narrative arc is saving the princess and the world from evil. The bad guy stuff is discounted because it is "just playing to get away from the real world and let off steam", like you put it.

Killing eggs is very different than babies. People don't have the same emotional response. The less the creature looks and acts human, the less people will respond as if it were human.

Yeah, that is the point, duh. The actual point of disagreement here is that I'm arguing that merely being fictional and known to be so is often different enough, and actually being obviously inhuman like an orc, xenomorph, demon (etc.) is almost certainly enough.

Where as you seem convinced that at least orcs are too human. But even if you were right, there's no imperative to play them so. If murdering orc babies makes someone uneasy, the solution could just as well be to make orc babies less like human babies, rather than arguing for evilness of orc infanticide.

Those are entirely different things. I don't agree that they are the same at all.

And I'd say if you don't see the causal link, you're missing something vital. Such as:

The banning of evil characters in gaming groups is mostly because a good portion of people who want to play "evil" characters are idiots and horrible team players. Only a minority of people can play an evil character intelligently.

Yeah, I know this is a widely-held belief in tabletop RPGs. Which means that every time some in-game act is labeled "evil", it expands the range of things which are banned for play.

I don't agree with the belief anyhow, because I see the banning of Evil characters to have more to do with TSR's policy changes and subsequent influence on D&D. And as mentioned, some of those changes were in response to one of the moral panics. A lot of hobbyists grew up with the idea that D&D is about Heroic Good Guys fighting Evil in a PG-13 environment, because the company which owned the game deliberately sanitized it to be so. 1st Edition AD&D was not like that at all.

Actual poor play is alignment neutral and the idea that Evil characters specifically attract poor players is a self-reinforcing stereotype.

Because these are the people I am currently communicating with, and these are the only people who are actually reading this thread... so their perception of this conversation is the only perception that matters.

And I approach all discussions of games with the viewpoint that the people involved will actually go and play those games, where they will have fellow players who aren't in this discussion. Myself, in particular, will regularly meet with players who are new to the entire hobby, and what I do or say can be what makes or breaks their interest in it.

So who I use as the standard for how I make, hold and play my games, will have direct impact on those people who aren't in this thread.

If all you ever intended was to make points that apply to this discussion, and these people only, I don't have a much of a reason to keep talking to you at all.

When it comes to values, most people don't like the concept of fictional rules. They take their real world values and import them into the game, and then either get confused when encountering things that don't exist in the real world... or have a good imagination and think "if that existed in the real world, how would I assess the morality of it?"

And I don't disagree... but I have always maintained that this is an error and moral rules ought to not be considered special in this regard. People have no problem whatsoever with fictional rules in general, as evidenced by practically all the games ever. New, deviant rules are confusing, yes, but that's not the sole determinator of whether they're good rules. "Like Earth unless otherwise noted" is a good standard for fiction and RPGs not because non-existent things are universally disliked, but because otherwise the ground rules for fiction and RPGs would be too incomplete to play or too hard to realistically implement. Gary Gygax says as much in 1st edition AD&D DMG, though not in these words

If the sole reason you argue against Alignment is because game definitions of good and evil don't match your real life beliefs, you may have made a valid statement of your preferences, but as criticism of game rules your opinion is close to useless. There are other, better reasons for realism in games than that.

Nevermind that this attitude again creates the perceived problem. When people insist importing their real beliefs into game morality, they create the impression that in-game morality must reflect real beliefs of the players, creating ground for bad faith accusations and the sort of moral alarmism I describe.

I didn't miss it, it didn't exist in my part of the world. I can't go into real world politics/religion without messing with board rules... so to keep it vague: think of the demographic that pushed that panic. That demographic is a very small minority where I live, and if they were to express such opinion people would just laugh at them.

And those demographic have always been small minorities. The difference is in how much people listen to them. If your community laughed at them and shrugged them off, points to them, but not all of the world was so smart. It's also good to remember that tabletop RPG players are a minority too. It doesn't take the majority to make things stupid for roleplayers, as the history of the hobby already proves. A loud minority is enough.

[Frozen_Feet]

How about "this reminds me too much of the rotten garbage that certain people spout in real life, let's not have it in the game too"?

That's not appreciably better. It's on the level of "Pineapple does not belong on pizza, everybody who claims it does is banned from my games for life!"

Hmmm. Remind me to actually implement that rule for my next game.

[Max_Killjoy]

That's not appreciably better. It's on the level of "Pineapple does not belong on pizza, everybody who claims it does is banned from my games for life!"

If characters or societies within the setting believe or espouse "Us = Good, Them = Evil", as their subjective stance, that's not a problem.

If a setting entirely sets aside all moral questions and just has Team Blue and Team Green or whatever, that's not a problem.

The problem is when the setting itself stakes a claim that "Us = Good, Them = Evil" is objective moral fact. It's the combination of "there are not moral questions" and "because they've all been answered in a horrible way".

[Tanarii]

The problem is when the setting itself stakes a claim that "Us = Good, Them = Evil" is objective moral fact.

You miss the point. The point is:
Team Us = the guys that do good things or the guys that don't do evil things.
Team Them = the guys who do evil things.

If you want to stay on Team Us, you either play a hero, or play a not-Villian, depending on how the campaign is being set up. The DM will have Team Us NPcs act accordingly.

Team Them are the Villians. The DM will have Team Them NPCs act accordingly. Generally IMx if you leave Team Us, you become an NPC under DM control, but your YMMV based on campaign rules.

Exceptions and stereotype breakers and sudden but inevitable turncoats may apply, but when using this paradigm (which is extremely common) the general breakdown is there for ease & simplicity & knowing both who is who and how they usually act and giving the PCs a clear and unambiguous target to fight as the heroes. Or at least as the not-villains.

Edit: and yes, within this paradigm, Good and Evil can be in-game cosmological objective just fine. It is not a problem.

Edit2:

It's the combination of "there are not moral questions" and "because they've all been answered in a horrible way".

woah this got added. What, specifically, do you find is answered in a horrible way under this paradigm?

Edit3:
I should be clear, in this post, I'm specifically referring to the common paradigm(s) of either Heroes vs Villians or Not-Villians vs Villians. One of the most common Us vs Them with morality breakdowns.

[Aliquid]

For example, a person who argues they're playing the "good guy" in GTA might argue so because they're the protagonist, or because they care about their family, or because they kill worse criminals.

Fair enough, but this is a discussion about alignment, where "good" has a much stronger and specific meaning, tied to morals and not tied to being a protagonist.

As another example, Legend of Zelda games often allow Link, the player character, to engage in all manner of bad stuff, like stealing, breaking property, lazing around while the world is burning or beating innocent animals. Players know this, as evidenced by 1001 jokes about Link being a speech-impaired sociopath.

and as such, in D&D, he wouldn't keep the "good" alignment for that behavior

Next to nobody seriously disputes that Link is a hero, however, because his actual relevant narrative arc is saving the princess and the world from evil. The bad guy stuff is discounted because it is "just playing to get away from the real world and let off steam", like you put it.

Whether or not he is a hero isn't relevant to him having a "good" alignment or not. And as you say they know they are doing bad guy stuff for fun. They don't try to argue or convince anyone that Link's behavior is virtuous when he is beating innocent animals. They would say "yeah, I'm playing Link like a jerk right now... it is funny". They are not saying "Link is a hero and beating animals is virtuous and just".

THATS the thing with alignment. If you use the system, you need to actually use it. If you are goofing around and having your character doing nasty things for fun, then your character doesn't have a "good" alignment. It might just be "neutral", that depends on how nasty the actions are. But I'm trying to figure out why this is such a big deal? What's wrong with just openly admitting that you are playing a jerk? Why do we have to pretend that there is some fantasy moral system where this ties in with a "good" alignment?

Where as you seem convinced that at least orcs are too human. But even if you were right, there's no imperative to play them so. If murdering orc babies makes someone uneasy, the solution could just as well be to make orc babies less like human babies, rather than arguing for evilness of orc infanticide.

That's not the solution either... the fact that people have less moral problems with killing something that looks or acts different isn't a good thing... it isn't something that should be encouraged.

Yeah, I know this is a widely-held belief in tabletop RPGs. Which means that every time some in-game act is labeled "evil", it expands the range of things which are banned for play.

Well then if someone wants to play a "dark" character or an "antihero", just talk it through with the GM and the players beforehand, set some ground rules about what lines can and can not be crossed for everyone to feel comfortable. Most people will be reasonable about it... there are no D&D police that will come up and arrest a player for playing a character who doesn't conform to certain moral norms.

Actual poor play is alignment neutral and the idea that Evil characters specifically attract poor players is a self-reinforcing stereotype.

Not in my experience.

And I approach all discussions of games with the viewpoint that the people involved will actually go and play those games, where they will have fellow players who aren't in this discussion. Myself, in particular, will regularly meet with players who are new to the entire hobby, and what I do or say can be what makes or breaks their interest in it.

And you won't win the other posters over on a thread if they perceive you as an amoral sociopath. If your intention is to sway people's opinions to improve their future interaction with other gamers... then you need to worry about what their perception is of you, or you won't sway their opinion.

And I don't disagree... but I have always maintained that this is an error and moral rules ought to not be considered special in this regard. People have no problem whatsoever with fictional rules in general, as evidenced by practically all the games ever.

Then make it clear what the rules are and why to the players ahead of time. You can say "the rules for alignment in this game match the moral standards of Ancient Rome, since that's what the environment of the game. Here is a description of what that means. Do be aware that this doesn't match standard modern day values"

If the sole reason you argue against Alignment is because game definitions of good and evil don't match your real life beliefs, you may have made a valid statement of your preferences, but as criticism of game rules your opinion is close to useless. There are other, better reasons for realism in games than that.

I don't care what the game "rules" are for alignment... I don't care what the game rules are for anything. If I like a rule I use it. If I don't like a rule I tweak it. D&D rules are just guidelines.

Nevermind that this attitude again creates the perceived problem. When people insist importing their real beliefs into game morality, they create the impression that in-game morality must reflect real beliefs of the players, creating ground for bad faith accusations and the sort of moral alarmism I describe.

Not at all. That's why this is called a Role-Playing game. You are playing a role of a character, you are not playing you. I have played characters with a large variety of values and beliefs that do not match mine. What your character does shouldn't have to be similar to what you would do at all.

[1337 b4k4]

Interesting.

But just how many sources are players supposed to check, over how many editions?

Is this approach actually and explicitly spelled out in any of the published core material, rather than in a 12-year-old website article that many/most players may have never seen?

Would you accept the AD&D Players Handbook (emphasis mine):

Law and good deeds are the meat and drink of paladins. If they ever knowingly perform an act which is chaotic in nature, they must seeka high level (7th or above) cleric of lawful good alignment, confess their sin, and do penance as prescribed by the cleric. If a paladin should ever knowingly and willingly perform on evil act, he or she loses the status of paladinhood immediately and irrevocably All benefits are then lost, and no deed or magic can restore the character to palodinhood; he or she is everafter a fighter.

That seems pretty clear, and from the very edition where the 2 axis alignment system was introduced.

Edit
-------

A paladin who ceases to be lawful good, who willfully commits an evil act, or who grossly violates the code of conduct loses all special abilities and spells, including the service of the paladin’s warhorse. She also may not progress in levels as a paladin. She regains her abilities if she atones for her violations (see the atonement spell description, page 176), as appropriate.

[Max_Killjoy]

Not at all. That's why this is called a Role-Playing game. You are playing a role of a character, you are not playing you. I have played characters with a large variety of values and beliefs that do not match mine. What your character does shouldn't have to be similar to what you would do at all.

As far as I'm concerned, the problem isn't characters having beliefs I find different, strange, or even repugnant. That's just humans or human-like beings, doing what humans do. It's often good roleplaying, and it can be part of exploring the secondary world.

It's when repugnant beliefs are asserted as objectively true and good, as a core aspect of the setting, that's the problem.

[King of Nowhere]

The only way to remove moral questions from the game is to remove morality. As soon as you add morality -- "objective" or not -- you add moral questions. Using "good" and "evil" as your Team Us and Team Them names immediately makes the division one of (at least supposed) morality.

Nah, you can't skip moral questions just because you don't ask them. The game revolves around beating other creatures, often sentient, and taking their stuff. Of course there is a moral question. In most tables the DM makes sure the creatures that get beaten give the protagonists ample justification to do so. The best way to do it is to make them the aggressor. Hence a division in team good and team evil comes natural.
Such division is blurred in games with a higher level of complexity. But in those games, players take moral decisions often, so morality is still in game.

EDIT:

As far as I'm concerned, the problem isn't characters having beliefs I find different, strange, or even repugnant. That's just humans or human-like beings, doing what humans do. It's often good roleplaying, and it can be part of exploring the secondary world.

It's when repugnant beliefs are asserted as objectively true and good, as a core aspect of the setting, that's the problem.

And this does not need to be the case. It is the case in a handful of tables, but in that case there is either some big mistake on the part of the pplayers, or it is intentional because those gamers like a crapsack world.

[Max_Killjoy]

Would you accept the AD&D Players Handbook (emphasis mine):



That seems pretty clear, and from the very edition where the 2 axis alignment system was introduced.

Edit
-------

Those would appear to be specific to the Paladin, so I'm not sure.

[Frozen_Feet]

The problem is when the setting itself stakes a claim that "Us = Good, Them = Evil" is objective moral fact. It's the combination of "there are not moral questions" and "because they've all been answered in a horrible way".

And as noted before in context of your "sick, absurdist horror show", this is not much of a problem for building a good game. In fact, what you describe as the problem is the point of all forms of Cosmic Horror, and the concepts of Cosmic Horror are spread all over D&D like certain bodily fluids over an adult film actress's face.

---

Fair enough, but this is a discussion about alignment, where "good" has a much stronger and specific meaning, tied to morals and not tied to being a protagonist.

And it doesn't make the difference you think it does, because both are still founded upon game rules. The only reason to think there's a difference is again the insisting that in-game good, for alignment, must reflect someone's real beliefs.

and as such, in D&D, he wouldn't keep the "good" alignment for that behavior
Whether or not he is a hero isn't relevant to him having a "good" alignment or not. And as you say they know they are doing bad guy stuff for fun. They don't try to argue or convince anyone that Link's behavior is virtuous when he is beating innocent animals. They would say "yeah, I'm playing Link like a jerk right now... it is funny". They are not saying "Link is a hero and beating animals is virtuous and just".

This just shows you missed the point.

D&D alignment does not apply to Legend of Zelda. What is good in Zelda =/= good in D&D, just like what's good in D&D =/= good in real life. I could make it even clearer how asinine your argument is by bringing up a game like ADOM, which has its owm aligment system.

Link is virtuous, good and just because the game portrays him as such. It does this regardless of the player's bad acts. All the players know that real life does not work like this, but they also know that the game does not work like real life.

In the exact same vein, I can simultaneously hold the belief that using lethal force without provocation against Demons, Devils and such is Good and Just, despite the fact that I hold that in reality, any sort of violence without provocation is wrong.

THATS the thing with alignment. If you use the system, you need to actually use it. If you are goofing around and having your character doing nasty things for fun, then your character doesn't have a "good" alignment. It might just be "neutral", that depends on how nasty the actions are. But I'm trying to figure out why this is such a big deal? What's wrong with just openly admitting that you are playing a jerk? Why do we have to pretend that there is some fantasy moral system where this ties in with a "good" alignment?

And this is just more of you missing the point. I have no problem whatsoever admitting when my character is being a jerk by real-world standards, while simultaneously holding they're a Big Good Heroic Badass by the game's standard.

I have no problem with using alignment precisely because I'm a-okay with such implications and acknowledge that changing the rules to better reflect my real morality is unnecessary.

That's not the solution either... the fact that people have less moral problems with killing something that looks or acts different isn't a good thing... it isn't something that should be encouraged.

And this is where you start sounding like a moral alarmist again. To recap: running over civilians nets you points and achievements in GTA. At least one GTA game has you torture a game character with a car battety in order yo proceed.

By your standard, GTA encourages heinous criminal acts, because the game rewards such behaviour. But the link between playing GTA and actual crimes is incredibly weak.

Same applies to violence against fictional non-humans. To date, no-one has demonstrated that rules encouraging in-game violence (such as alignment, experience points and loot) has a causal link, or even noticeable correlation, with real violence.

The thing you're trying to dress up as a problem, isn't. If you disagree, find me a real statistical study showing otherwise, or get out.

Well then if someone wants to play a "dark" character or an "antihero", just talk it through with the GM and the players beforehand, set some ground rules about what lines can and can not be crossed for everyone to feel comfortable. Most people will be reasonable about it... there are no D&D police that will come up and arrest a player for playing a character who doesn't conform to certain moral norms.

Once more, not the actual problem under discussion. The alignment system already does this without a hitch, I can directly quote 1st ed AD&D on this if you want to.

Not in my experience.

Your experience is your experience and my experience directly contradicts it.

And you won't win the other posters over on a thread if they perceive you as an amoral sociopath. If your intention is to sway people's opinions to improve their future interaction with other gamers... then you need to worry about what their perception is of you, or you won't sway their opinion.

Hands up, anyone, if you think I'm arguing from the position of amoral sociopathy. I want to point and laugh at you.

Then make it clear what the rules are and why to the players ahead of time. You can say "the rules for alignment in this game match the moral standards of Ancient Rome, since that's what the environment of the game. Here is a description of what that means. Do be aware that this doesn't match standard modern day values"

This is not any sort of a problem nor is it something the alignment system doesn't already do.

I don't care what the game "rules" are for alignment... I don't care what the game rules are for anything. If I like a rule I use it. If I don't like a rule I tweak it. D&D rules are just guidelines.

In that case, you didn't think through what you just said, and have categorically disqualified yourself from all discussions of games design.

Hint: if there are rules you like and rules you dislike, you do infact care about the rules and there exists at least one standard of good and bad rules.

Not at all. That's why this is called a Role-Playing game. You are playing a role of a character, you are not playing you. I have played characters with a large variety of values and beliefs that do not match mine. What your character does shouldn't have to be similar to what you would do at all.

If you can engage in sufficient doublethink to play a character to whom your good is their evil, and their good is your evil, you are bloody well capable of playing in a setting where Cosmic Good is not your good. There is no fundamental difference, and that is the reason why worrying about orc infanticide being good is stupid.

[Florian]

The only way to remove moral questions from the game is to remove morality. As soon as you add morality -- "objective" or not -- you add moral questions. Using "good" and "evil" as your Team Us and Team Them names immediately makes the division one of (at least supposed) morality.

Which is in and of itself a moral claim about the nature of the society.

Has anyone on this thread even gone into such ridiculous territory? If so, I missed it.

You're basically wrong on all points.

D&D morality references D&D morality and nothing else. All it must do is work in the confines and context of the game itself, nothing more. It works by removing the moral paradox, like a "good" person becoming cleric of an "evil" deity to do "good" with that power. That scenario is simply ruled out by not being possible in the first place.
Notice, for example, the AD&D monster manual entry for orcs also generating a number of non-combatants (old, women, children..). Now playing "team good" (and accepting the underlaying premises) means that the question what to do with them should not come up, or be answered with "leave them be", as tackling that kind of questions is supposed to be not part of the game.

[Max_Killjoy]

You're basically wrong on all points.

D&D morality references D&D morality and nothing else. All it must do is work in the confines and context of the game itself, nothing more. It works by removing the moral paradox, like a "good" person becoming cleric of an "evil" deity to do "good" with that power. That scenario is simply ruled out by not being possible in the first place.

Notice, for example, the AD&D monster manual entry for orcs also generating a number of non-combatants (old, women, children..). Now playing "team good" (and accepting the underlaying premises) means that the question what to do with them should not come up, or be answered with "leave them be", as tackling that kind of questions is supposed to be not part of the game.

"D&D morality" does not and can not exist in a vacuum. It cannot be conveniently restricted to self-referential isolation. If that kind of question with the noncombatant orcs is not part of the game, then moral questions, and morality itself, are not part of the game. And if morality is not part of the game, then using the labels "Good" and "Evil" for the "teams" is pointless.

I can't tell from your phrasing whether you mean that "the question should not come up, or the question should be answered with 'leave them be'", or you mean that "the question should not come up, or the question should not be answered with 'leave them be'".

But either way, it comes down to players who "want to kill stuff and have fun and not think about it". Which is fine, but don't pretend that morality is part of that game in the first place.

[Satinavian]

If you can engage in sufficient doublethink to play a character to whom your good is their evil, and their good is your evil, you are bloody well capable of playing in a setting where Cosmic Good is not your good. There is no fundamental difference, and that is the reason why worrying about orc infanticide being good is stupid.

I disagree.

There is a difference of playing criminals and murderers in Shadowrun or Vampire, not feeling bad about it and accepting the premises of the game or playing RaHoWa, accepting the premises of the game and not feeling bad about it.

If a game has an intrinsic message about what is good and evil then that can be really grating during play if players don't agree. Because you can't really argue with cosmic truth.

[Frozen_Feet]

Notice, for example, the AD&D monster manual entry for orcs also generating a number of non-combatants (old, women, children..). Now playing "team good" (and accepting the underlaying premises) means that the question what to do with them should not come up, or be answered with "leave them be", as tackling that kind of questions is supposed to be not part of the game.

I'd want to once again draw attention to the fact that 1st and 2nd editions of AD&D differ in how they treat this. For example in 1st Edition, it's said a Chaotic Good character might enslave captured orcs, with the intent of teaching them to respect freedom and well-being of other creatures. Monster Manual has rules for Good, Neutral and Evil creature non-combatants and babies, and also options of all alignments for how to treat them.

So the question of "what to do with monster babies and captured non-combatants?", was meant to be part of the game. But on the moral realm, the question wasn't "so is this Good or Evil?" It was "so which kind of a role I'm playing and actually want to play?" It's notable that in 1st edition, there's not one "team good", there are three, as general agreement and mutual acceptability is said to only exist within an alignment. And even beings of same alignment may disagree - an example is specifically given of two Lawful Good kingdoms being at war.

[Frozen_Feet]

I disagree.

There is a difference of playing criminals and murderers in Shadowrun or Vampire, not feeling bad about it and accepting the premises of the game or playing RaHoWa, accepting the premises of the game and not feeling bad about it.

If a game has an intrinsic message about what is good and evil then that can be really grating during play if players don't agree. Because you can't really argue with cosmic truth.

Racial Holy Wars was specifically made to be Neo-Nazi propaganda, though. Does anyone think D&D alignment was actually made to serve as any kind of propaganda?

Or, put differently: I don't disagree on whether the specific example is grating, but I question if it's really the "intrinsic message" that's the issue. The emotion is at least partially based on extrinsic knowledge that the creators were (IIRC) genuine Neo-Nazis.

[Tanarii]

If you can engage in sufficient doublethink to play a character to whom your good is their evil, and their good is your evil, you are bloody well capable of playing in a setting where Cosmic Good is not your good. There is no fundamental difference, and that is the reason why worrying about orc infanticide being good is stupid.

in theory I agree, but many people are incapable of playing characters as anything other than avatars of heir own personality, with different abilities and histories. This is one reason back stories that are "and then and then and then" checklists of how they got their abilities, or simple history-based 'revenge' motivations, are so popular.

Which is one reason why these people get so upset when their personal morality clashes with someone else's at the table, and their being told that morality is in-universe objective. They're being told their moral judgement is wrong, and they can't handle that, even for fictional pretend wrong.

(Please note that in-universe objective doesn't mean it can't be table-agreed-upon subjective. The problem stems from the table not agreeing on something. If they all agree on how it works in-game, there is no problem.)

Personally I only have problems when people are messing up the tone of the game I want to run ImC. Which is currently not-villains cooperating to explore dungeon & wilderness adventure sites, fight villainous or dangerous but dumb monsters, and occasionally battle villains. Luckily 5e Alignment makes that easy, because it's about associated overall behavior, not specific actions. So I can point to the three evil Alignment associated behaviors and say "don't have your PC act like this regularly. Thanks."

-------

The other reason for stupid table arguments, in general, is typical TRpG players who need to argue over details and feel a need to be right, and haven't yet learned to take that to forums and keep it away from the table yet.

[Aliquid]

And it doesn't make the difference you think it does, because both are still founded upon game rules. The only reason to think there's a difference is again the insisting that in-game good, for alignment, must reflect someone's real beliefs.

I'm not even arguing that. I'm saying that for the majority of people who play D&D, they define in game "good" to match their real beliefs. Therefore when you argue with them about what is and isn't good "in game", you are arguing with them about their real world beliefs... which is going to make them think that your real world beliefs are twisted.

Furthermore, many of them will have a hard time coming to terms with you explaining that you are capable of separating your real world values from the fantasy world values... so, they will still hear your comments about in game as being related to real world, even after you explained otherwise.

That's why I say that you have to make it 100% clear that this is what's happening in a game upfront. It doesn't matter if the "rules" support your approach, you need to explicitly tell people "in this game, the moral system is different than what our modern cultural values would dictate, so something that you might find unpleasant might be 'good' according to the cosmic alignment rules" And then you would need to explain exactly what is "good" and what is "evil" in this game world. Even then some people will have a hard time with it.

And this is where you start sounding like a moral alarmist again. To recap: running over civilians nets you points and achievements in GTA. At least one GTA game has you torture a game character with a car battety in order yo proceed.

By your standard, GTA encourages heinous criminal acts, because the game rewards such behaviour. But the link between playing GTA and actual crimes is incredibly weak.

No... no I'm not saying that. If someone is playing GTA like that and thinks "I am a bad-ass jerk and this is fun"... that's fine. If someone plays GTA and thinks "I'm playing a morally upstanding and virtuous character" then that person has mental health issues and I worry about them in real life. Since 99% of people who play GTA meet the first description there isn't a problem. The remaining 1% are a problem but wouldn't be statistically significant to show up in a study on video games causes violence... that type of person would be dangerous even if they didn't play the game.

Once more, not the actual problem under discussion. The alignment system already does this without a hitch, I can directly quote 1st ed AD&D on this if you want to.

For someone who argues the value of the rules... you should use rules from this century.

In that case, you didn't think through what you just said, and have categorically disqualified yourself from all discussions of games design.

Hint: if there are rules you like and rules you dislike, you do infact care about the rules and there exists at least one standard of good and bad rules.

I'm not discussing rules, I am discussing game-play. Which often is, but not always is tied to the rules.

[RedMage125]

If the sole reason you argue against Alignment is because game definitions of good and evil don't match your real life beliefs, you may have made a valid statement of your preferences, but as criticism of game rules your opinion is close to useless. There are other, better reasons for realism in games than that.

Nevermind that this attitude again creates the perceived problem. When people insist importing their real beliefs into game morality, they create the impression that in-game morality must reflect real beliefs of the players, creating ground for bad faith accusations and the sort of moral alarmism I describe.

This is so good I almost want to add it to my signature. I argue this same point so many times, I've gone blue in the face from it. Well said.

And this is just more of you missing the point. I have no problem whatsoever admitting when my character is being a jerk by real-world standards, while simultaneously holding they're a Big Good Heroic Badass by the game's standard.

I have no problem with using alignment precisely because I'm a-okay with such implications and acknowledge that changing the rules to better reflect my real morality is unnecessary.

Also this. This is what I mean when I say people are "deviating from the RAW of alignment" when it causes problems. Maybe you and I are aberrant, in that we are able to set aside our preconceived notions of what "Good/Evil/Law/Chaos" mean by our own standards, and adjudicate a game of D&D by how D&D defines those things. But I doubt it.

This, as with any other houserules/deviations, is something that needs to be made clear to players before games start. One of the reasons that I use the RAW definitions of alignment and NOT my own is so my players have access to the very same sources that define those things to have a baseline understanding of how my adjudication is going to work. This was especially easy to accomplish in 3.xe, where my players could easily reference the PHB, BoVD, or BoED is they had any questions.

Of course, in my case, this is true of most of my rulings. I have about 6 house rules that I use in 3.5e, and I let my players know what they are in advance. They're extremely player-friendly, so no one ever complains.

Your experience is your experience and my experience directly contradicts it.

I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that his experience, if shared, amounts to a problem with people deviating from the RAW of what alignment says. As I said in my initial post, 100% of the stories I have seen or heard about problems with alignment involve people deviating from the RAW -to include people not using the RAW definitions and substituting their own.

Hands up, anyone, if you think I'm arguing from the position of amoral sociopathy. I want to point and laugh at you.

Lol. I don't, if it makes you feel better.

In that case, you didn't think through what you just said, and have categorically disqualified yourself from all discussions of games design.

Hint: if there are rules you like and rules you dislike, you do infact care about the rules and there exists at least one standard of good and bad rules.

Agree. People sometimes don't understand that in a forum discussion about game rules, only what is in the RAW is "True". Since all house rules are impossible to account for, no house rule is valid for discussion of game rules. And any argument predicated on "I think the game rules are wrong" automatically invalidates itself.

You're basically wrong on all points.

D&D morality references D&D morality and nothing else. All it must do is work in the confines and context of the game itself, nothing more. It works by removing the moral paradox, like a "good" person becoming cleric of an "evil" deity to do "good" with that power. That scenario is simply ruled out by not being possible in the first place.
Notice, for example, the AD&D monster manual entry for orcs also generating a number of non-combatants (old, women, children..). Now playing "team good" (and accepting the underlaying premises) means that the question what to do with them should not come up, or be answered with "leave them be", as tackling that kind of questions is supposed to be not part of the game.

I wish you the best of luck. He's never going to support his arguments, and when you ask him to, he'll block you, to avoid ever having to face someone pointing out that his points are not supported.

"D&D morality" does not and can not exist in a vacuum. It cannot be conveniently restricted to self-referential isolation. If that kind of question with the noncombatant orcs is not part of the game, then moral questions, and morality itself, are not part of the game. And if morality is not part of the game, then using the labels "Good" and "Evil" for the "teams" is pointless.

You won't see this, I guess, so it's for the benefit of anyone else reading, but you're dead wrong.

D&D as a construct of fantasy. Therefore, it absolutely can be "restricted to self-referential isolation". If the RAW says "x is Good and y is Evil" then-for the purposes of the RAW and the default setting of D&D, it is a true statement that x is Good and y is Evil. That's how rules discussions of a game work.

Which is one reason why these people get so upset when their personal morality clashes with someone else's at the table, and their being told that morality is in-universe objective. They're being told their moral judgement is wrong, and they can't handle that, even for fictional pretend wrong.

(Please note that in-universe objective doesn't mean it can't be table-agreed-upon subjective. The problem stems from the table not agreeing on something. If they all agree on how it works in-game, there is no problem.)

That's a great point.

For someone who argues the value of the rules... you should use rules from this century.

This is an edition-neutral forum. Rules from any edition which include alignment are valid fodder.

I'm not discussing rules, I am discussing game-play. Which often is, but not always is tied to the rules.

Except that this discussion is-overall-about the value of alignment rules. Ergo, a clear understanding of exactly what those rules are is key to the discussion.

When posters like MK say "alignment is only bad x and bad y, just because I say so, with no proof of what I say presented from any of the books, but I'm going to post prolifically only using my definitions", a discussion cannot go anywhere constructive. Until the people discussing the value of a set of rules know what those rules actually ARE, no valid discussion can be had.

[Mechalich]

D&D as a construct of fantasy. Therefore, it absolutely can be "restricted to self-referential isolation". If the RAW says "x is Good and y is Evil" then-for the purposes of the RAW and the default setting of D&D, it is a true statement that x is Good and y is Evil. That's how rules discussions of a game work.

While this is true, restricting a system to self-referential isolation is not good design, because it becomes counter-intuitive, opaque to casual interrogation, and subject to authorial contradictions. Alignment in D&D is all three of these things: the influence of the neutral alignment zone throws up weird ethical conundrums that don't match pretty much any real-world system; explaining alignment is complex and requires sourcebooks with thousands of words devoted to describing what the nine alignments mean; and different authors have thrown out dramatically different meanings for the same alignments both across and within editions.

Moral systems in games are something of a Catch-22 for designers. If you pick a well-known real-life moral philosophy and declare it to be true you'll face massive charges of prejudice and unless you say that there's a single universal culture you're engaged in picking winners and losers. Vampire: the Masquerade has this problem. It chose Christianity as 'correct' (Caine is the First Vampire and all that jazz) and that caused no end of issues whenever the game went outside the Christian West. On the other hand, if you make up your own moral philosophy, not only is it likely to be dubious and muddled because game designers aren't philosophy professors but since games are collaborative design enterprises you're never going to get everyone to agreed even from the outset. Star Wars has this problem in spades with decades of effort spent trying to parse what the light side and dark side represent ethically and numerous systems that channel players to ridiculous extremes by trying to 'max out' their meters in one direction or the other.

D&D alignment can work if everyone takes it seriously and the GM and players are on the same page, but this is far more difficult and cumbersome than it should be, and for many tables it is not worth the effort.

[Satinavian]

Or, put differently: I don't disagree on whether the specific example is grating, but I question if it's really the "intrinsic message" that's the issue. The emotion is at least partially based on extrinsic knowledge that the creators were (IIRC) genuine Neo-Nazis.

For me that is different. I don't care that much who wrote the rules (for many RPGs i played i know nothing else ebout the authors), i just don't like an intrinsic moral message in my games. Such a thing will always be present when you play. And you can't even argue against it because the author is not at the table. Instead he will be always right be always right because in the game that is just an underlying truth.

Sure, it is easier to ignore the less i disagree with it. And yes, other RPGs are also colored by the views of the authors. Shadowrun glorifies anarchism a bit and i have played games where recreational drugs have been used to show who is the villian of the story. I have played many modules where authors assume that the PCs choose a particular side of a conflict because that is meant to be seen as the good side where i found this assessment more than questionable.

But all of that is far easier to overcome than "good" and "evil" baked into the rules.

[Tanarii]

D&D alignment can work if everyone takes it seriously and the GM and players are on the same page, but this is far more difficult and cumbersome than it should be, and for many tables it is not worth the effort.

5e Alignment is one page of the rules, and the explanations and definitions of each alignment consist of two sentences each, of which 1 is describing typical classes and creatures of that alignment. So a single sentence of typical, but not required or consistent, associated behavior is the entirety of Alignment.

Despite that, I find it works wonderfully. It provides an additional motivation for the PCs that use motivations to assist in determining in-character actions, along with the other personality motivations. And it allows me to easily set up a Not-Villian (any Good or Neutral) vs Villain (Evil) tone, a nice clear Us vs Them division between adventuring PCs and the creatures they're usually fighting in dungeon and wilderness adventuring sites.

[Aliquid]

I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that his experience, if shared, amounts to a problem with people deviating from the RAW of what alignment says. As I said in my initial post, 100% of the stories I have seen or heard about problems with alignment involve people deviating from the RAW -to include people not using the RAW definitions and substituting their own.

No... no it doesn't at all. It isn't deviation of any sort, it starts with someone saying "I want to play an evil character in this campaign", and ends in disaster. A player saying "I am going to play an evil character" has as much chance of going well for the rest of the gaming group as a player sayin "I want to play a Kender." It ends up with that one character making the other characters lives miserable, and the player excusing it with "but I'm just role-playing in character... don't blame me"

If a group decides "lets play a campaign where we are all the bad guys", things tend to work out better, because everyone is on the same page.

Agree. People sometimes don't understand that in a forum discussion about game rules, only what is in the RAW is "True". Since all house rules are impossible to account for, no house rule is valid for discussion of game rules. And any argument predicated on "I think the game rules are wrong" automatically invalidates itself.

This argument is about whether or not "alignment" is something that should be a rule or not in the first place. Discussing the challenges that exist because of peoples interpretation or misinterpretation of how to implement alignment is completely on topic. And saying "RAW only", shows that you misunderstand the issue in the fist place. Putting this in game terms, you and Frozen_Feet are approaching this argument from a Lawful mindset (follow the rules, and the traditional rules are better than the modern ones), and others do not have that mindset.

This is an edition-neutral forum. Rules from any edition which include alignment are valid fodder.

Then you can't bolster your argument by saying "this set of rules say this". You can't say "but RAW, people RAW!!!" because there are various versions of RAW out there. RAW is irrelevant unless we are only using one set.

When posters like MK say "alignment is only bad x and bad y, just because I say so, with no proof of what I say presented from any of the books, but I'm going to post prolifically only using my definitions", a discussion cannot go anywhere constructive. Until the people discussing the value of a set of rules know what those rules actually ARE, no valid discussion can be had.

MK isn't arguing about the rules in the book. He is arguing about the people playing the game, and their beliefs. So your points about the rules are totally irrelevant.

[Max_Killjoy]

This argument is about whether or not "alignment" is something that should be a rule or not in the first place. Discussing the challenges that exist because of peoples interpretation or misinterpretation of how to implement alignment is completely on topic. And saying "RAW only", shows that you misunderstand the issue in the fist place. Putting this in game terms, you and Frozen_Feet are approaching this argument from a Lawful mindset (follow the rules, and the traditional rules are better than the modern ones), and others do not have that mindset.

Then you can't bolster your argument by saying "this set of rules say this". You can't say "but RAW, people RAW!!!" because there are various versions of RAW out there. RAW is irrelevant unless we are only using one set.

MK isn't arguing about the rules in the book. He is arguing about the people playing the game, and their beliefs. So your points about the rules are totally irrelevant.

Right -- I'm far more concerned with how Alignment is actually viewed and used by players; what a game designer might be trying to accomplish with Alignment and why it would be in a system at all; and whether it accomplishes anything useful to have it in a system.

[Mechalich]

No... no it doesn't at all. It isn't deviation of any sort, it starts with someone saying "I want to play an evil character in this campaign", and ends in disaster. A player saying "I am going to play an evil character" has as much chance of going well for the rest of the gaming group as a player sayin "I want to play a Kender." It ends up with that one character making the other characters lives miserable, and the player excusing it with "but I'm just role-playing in character... don't blame me"

Someone playing the only evil character in an otherwise good or neutral party isn't an alignment problem it's a table management problem. The proper response by a GM to a player saying "I'm going to play an evil character." is "No, you are not." And that's the exact same response you would give to a player who says "I'm going to play a psychopath" in a game without a morality system. If anything this is one area where alignment is helpful, because it is much easier for the GM to forbid whole classes of troublesome characters by saying they fall into the 'evil' category rather than having to parse individual backstories to recognize that a given character will be a problem.

Players who wish to be jerks and foster intra-party conflict while hiding behind the 'but I'm just role-playing my character' are not an alignment related issue. They crop up just as often, if not more often, in games without moral systems.

[Aliquid]

Players who wish to be jerks and foster intra-party conflict while hiding behind the 'but I'm just role-playing my character' are not an alignment related issue. They crop up just as often, if not more often, in games without moral systems.

My original point was about DMs banning evil alignments... and that it typically is done because players who want to play an evil character in a non-evil campaign are typically going to be jerks.

I'm not suggesting that people aren't able to be jerks otherwise, nor am I arguing that this is an overly frequent or common type of jerk... I'm just saying that this subset of players are quickly and easily identified as jerks before the game even starts when they say "I'm going to play an evil character", and it is completely justified for a DM to ban evil characters to avoid this issue.

[Chogokin]

I apologize, I read the first page and the last page, and pretty much skipped everything in the middle, although it looks like the topic has undergone some fascinating mutations.

Have you ever considered how awesomely powerful an advantage it is to have no restrictions on your action, at all? Think about all the ways in which your behavior is constrained: by your personalty, by your upbringing, by the behavioral codes of your society and your culture, by your expectations or fears of legal or civil punishment. And we haven't even touched on violence: how many behavioral restraints would you have to break before you would consider, say, punching a nazi, or willfully aiming and firing a gun at another human being, even if that person were directly threatening your life or the life of someone else? I think it would be really hard, personally.

Now, consider how unlimited the behavior of a typical D&D (any iteration) character is. First, all D&D characters are casual killers. There are no rules in the game which would prevent a character from engaging in lethal violence at the drop of a hat, nor any sort of rules for flashbacks, guilt complexes, or PTSD from the casual violence of a typical dungeon crawl. There are really only at best, three restrictions on the behavior of a character. First, there is alignment, which every character has. Second, some classes may have specific restrictions on behavior. Third, the player may chose to roleplay his or her character as having a well-formed personality, including certain behaviors which the character is or is not likely to engage in.

Many games created after D&D had been around for a while addressed this through various systems, mostly be encouraging players to create characters with disadvantages in some areas in order to afford advantages in other areas.

I'm going a bit long on this, so I'm going to try to summarize.

It's a question of role-playing vs. roll-playing. If all you want to do is roll dice and kill goblins, deep discussion of your character's moral code and behavioral restrictions are really beside the point. On the other tentacle, if you are more interested in narrative and story-telling, then morality and behavior are very much at issue, and also generally poorly supported by most systems. D&D didn't do a spectacular job with character behavior, but they did at least create a framework for it, a sort of rough shorthand for establishing a character's mode of interacting with the world.

Also, and this is often forgotten by many people today, 40-ish years into the hobby, that D&D established a setting where this actually mattered. People have alignments, monsters have alignments, gods have alignments, even some frickin' swords have alignments. Alignments can be detected, alignments can render one vulnerable to certain types of damage; in short, they mattered physically and mechanically in the world established by the core rules. It really is part of the default assumptions of the setting.

The problem is, so many years down the road, so many creative visions later, many players have completely lost the sense of what the D&D universe was like, but they keep on hauling the rules framework forward into the future with them. If you want to play a game of D&D in a world with no objective scale of good and evil, that's fine, but you really should scrap the alignment system and everything in the rules that revolves around the alignment system. That means scrapping or re-writing paladins, druids, monks, rangers in some editions, a slew of spells, rethinking how gods work, etc. etc.

Anyway, I think that's all I wanted to say. Thank your for paying attention to my rant, and I hope it was at least somewhat entertaining.

[PhoenixPhyre]

If you want to play a game of D&D in a world with no objective scale of good and evil, that's fine, but you really should scrap the alignment system and everything in the rules that revolves around the alignment system. That means scrapping or re-writing paladins, druids, monks, rangers in some editions, a slew of spells, rethinking how gods work, etc. etc.

Note that 5e basically did this. There are a few elements that key off of alignment, but they're in the DM's hands only. A few magic items, a single creature that can actually mechanically detect alignment, and a few optional planar bits. No spells that interact with alignment directly, no more detect evil'ing people (it only detects outsiders and undead, basically), the protection from evil and good spell basically only interacts with outsiders and undead, etc. Paladins, druids, monks and rangers aren't alignment tied any more at all--paladins are tied to an oath which has specific tenets; the others aren't tied at all to any specific mechanical moral code.

Gods still have alignments, as do other outsiders, but the role of alignment in the mortal realm is much diminished. And that, in my opinion, is a good thing (pun intended).

[hamishspence]

Note that 5e basically did this. There are a few elements that key off of alignment, but they're in the DM's hands only. A few magic items, a single creature that can actually mechanically detect alignment, and a few optional planar bits. No spells that interact with alignment directly, no more detect evil'ing people (it only detects outsiders and undead, basically), the protection from evil and good spell basically only interacts with outsiders and undead, etc. Paladins, druids, monks and rangers aren't alignment tied any more at all--paladins are tied to an oath which has specific tenets; the others aren't tied at all to any specific mechanical moral code.

Gods still have alignments, as do other outsiders, but the role of alignment in the mortal realm is much diminished. And that, in my opinion, is a good thing (pun intended).

4e did this even earlier than 5e.

[Liquor Box]

Right -- I'm far more concerned with how Alignment is actually viewed and used by players; what a game designer might be trying to accomplish with Alignment and why it would be in a system at all; and whether it accomplishes anything useful to have it in a system.

Surely there is some use in having an alignment system so players (at least those who want it) have a point of reference as to what constitutes good and what constitutes evil in the game.

If you didn't have it, many gaming sessions might devolve into arguments as to whether the thing the paladin did was wonderful heroic or whether it was evil and she deserved to fall. People do not agree about how moral dilemmas should be handled, there probably is no truly 'right' answer to a lot of them, so the rules provide some guidance (which superficially accords with most people's real life morals) so there is a frame of reference - so the players can agree to disagree on what the 'true' moral answer is, and play on by using the game's moral answer.