Dungeon Fantasy: "Alignment" Traits

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

That's magic, though. I can't envision mundane industry, at medieval TLs and with even optimistic assumptions about what kind of manpower would be available, doing anything much that could trigger a SoD: Nature in someone else. The land is so wide, and manly projects are so small, after all.

DF has magic aplenty, and a society comparable to one from the Industrial Revolution wouldn't be out of genre. A bunch of humans (or dwarves, or orcs, or whatever) cutting down entire forests to feed the production of arms and armor could be appropriate, and certainly anyone aligned to Bunny would oppose that. Slash-and-burn agriculture has been practiced since TL0 and, with a sufficiently large population to feed, could cause some serious damage. Looking at LTC3, a group of even hunter-gatherers can, if not careful, render a small area - likely still large enough to upset your typical Bunny-type - virtually desolate in a matter of months. Mass trapping can kill large numbers of animals at a time, and "firestick farming" strikes me as something significantly anti-Bunny. I'd say there's plenty of room for a Bunny alignment in DF without getting into extremes (which, of course, are also in-genre for DF).

Originally Posted by Bruno

I'm not 100% sure why "nature" became nicknamed "Bunny".

Some of the DF references to nature traits (namely, the Forest Guardian Talent and the Half-Elf writeup) refer to bunnies, so I'd imagine that's where it came from.

Originally Posted by Dalillama

Many years of confusion over just what the Neutral alignments, especially True Neutral, actually mean AFAICT. One possible meaning is a character who has consciously decided that they don't want to see the triumph of Good, Evil, Law, or Chaos, and is devoted to maintaining some kind of balance between them. The other one is the 'natural' alignment found in animal intelligence creatures (and, theoretically, Druids): a character who is simply unconcerned with matters of good and evil and morality and the like; the wolves trying to eat your horse aren't evil, they're just being wolves.

IIRC, there was also the fact that the DnD god of nature and balance was True Neutral.

[PseudoFenton]

As someone who spent far too long populating D&D forums before I shifted over the GURPS - I can tell you that no good will come from trying to emulate the D&D styled Good-Evil and Lawful-Chaotic alignment axes. No one will ever truly agree on what they mean, should mean, did mean or are intended to facilitate in the actual game.

{Cut}

Oh gawd, I just typed so much outlining the many debates that occur, and then realised I really have internalised the arguments so well that I can have them with myself now.

Instead, I'll leave one point to illustrate how GURPS disadvantages solves none of the problems that D&D-style alignment causes, and only causes more things to argue over. Is Pacifism (Cannot Harm Innocents) a Good trait, considering most standard GURPS demons have it to stop them running havoc?

---

Personally, I prefer the Good vs Evil as a cosmic stamp, with no other behaviour associated with them other than "you did good, and I have a Good Stamp, so you're now Good" or "I dislike what you did, and I have an Evil Stamp, so you're now Evil" or "you're one of us, and we're Evil and have an Evil Stamp, welcome to team Evil!".

DF pretty much does this already. Half Infernal creatures are just Evil, even if they're really nice and pleasant and help people. They're always stamped to say Evil, regardless of how they act. This solves so many problems, it removes the idea of platonic ideals of Good and Evil, they're just decided by some deities or system and the rules can and do often change, they mean things because lots of stuff looks for the stamp marks, but they're no more informative than any other title given. A King is a meaningful title, but not one that tells you the temperament or behaviour other than in the vaguest sense loaded with assumptions.

Also, I love the Bunny/Squid axis, as the "Natural, Common" vs "Unknowable, Outsider". Even when taken as "Old natural simple ways" vs "New technological complicated ways" it works really well - Nyarlathotep being the very best personifcation of the Squid in this sense, and allowing Foresty Druids vs Urban Cultists to logically mesh as opposites.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Maybe. But how much large-scale natural destruction actually happens in a medieval fantasy setting, sufficient to upset even a moderate bunny-type Druid?

You'd be amazed. Desertification from overgrazing and problematic farming practices is one that leaps immediately to mind; deforestation's another one; low-tech societies can go through wood at a rate that would astonish many moderns, and it's got to come from somewhere, not to mention the constant need for more cleared farmland. That's what killed off the aurochs, principally; the forests they used to live in were all cut down. In Britain, 1,000 oaks, each easily centuries old, were felled to make the framework for Salisbury Cathedral alone, and countless more to make the ships in which Britannia would rule the waves for centuries.

[Dwarf99]

Originally Posted by PseudoFenton

Instead, I'll leave one point to illustrate how GURPS disadvantages solves none of the problems that D&D-style alignment causes, and only causes more things to argue over.

I disagree, but I can see the difference will likely be an insurmountable one, so I won't argue the point, I'll just use your next bit to tell you why I disagree

Is Pacifism (Cannot Harm Innocents) a Good trait, considering most standard GURPS demons have it to stop them running havoc?

Yes. It's a good trait. End of story. A good trait doesn't make those who posess them overall to be good. This isn't the problem your post seems to indicate that it is.

DF pretty much does this already. Half Infernal creatures are just Evil, even if they're really nice and pleasant and help people.

The idea is that pleasant and nice aren't always good, and that "helping people" can be done for very bad reasons. Like selfishness or sadism. YOU SIGNED A CONTRACT WITH ME i GET TO TORTURE YOUR SOUL! Or whatever. That may not be the canonical idea, but I imagine quite few demons (I don't personally know of any) don't have any of the Evil traits mentioned upthread, and probably a good bit of the chaotic ones.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I don't see Balance and Nature as synonymous, and I've always wondered just where the D&D folks got that idea.

The answer is that they didn't. They had a preexisting alignment system and slotted in "druid" as an alternate neutral since they didn't really fit in with cosmic law or chaos.

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I think the OP wants to delve deeper into morality than the G/E/B/S division does, and also tie some (presumably as many as simulatively feasible) of the mental disads to one of the alignments.

Morality has already been delved deeper than Good/Evil/Bunny/Squid. There's the whole GURPS mental disadvantage system for that. The point of alignment in a system like GURPS is for it to be cosmically true not merely descriptive. I don't feel an implicit division of Order and Chaos in DF so I don't think there is an implicit touchstone for the thread. Since people have very different views about what the Order/Chaos divide means it's important for Ghostdancer to describe what they mean to him so we don't get sidetracked on decades old arguments.

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

This Order/Chaos distinction seems to be older than the Good/Evil distinction, and is present both in medieval Christian and in medieval pagan societies, although in medieval Christian (and other medieval Abrahamic) societies the presence of two different moral value systems probably had a lot of interesting effects. Notice how you can't explain medieval homophobia via the Good/Evil axis - there simply isn't anything Evil at all about two men wanting to be intimate with each other - but there is a lot of Chaos in it.

The Order/Chaos distinction was invented by modern fantasy authors. Historical societies didn't go around saying "well these guys are morally quite good but they are very chaotic".

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Maybe. But how much large-scale natural destruction actually happens in a medieval fantasy setting, sufficient to upset even a moderate bunny-type Druid?

DF presents the typical dungeon fantasy setting. Which is called medieval but isn't.The typical "medieval" fantasy settings are actually doing early modern minus the guns probably with a whole bunch of historical societies (such as the Romans) just hanging around and with a good chance of having steampunk dwarves or gnomes.

[cbower]

Originally Posted by PseudoFenton

Is Pacifism (Cannot Harm Innocents) a Good trait, considering most standard GURPS demons have it to stop them running havoc?

This bothered me enough to change Pacifism on demons to Divine Curse a few years ago.

[McAllister]

Originally Posted by Dwarf99

Yes. It's a good trait. End of story. A good trait doesn't make those who posess them overall to be good. This isn't the problem your post seems to indicate that it is.

The issue with that is that Bruno proposed a system wherein any unfortunate soul who is A. in close proximity to an exploding Holy Hand Grenade and B. has -15 or more points from the Evil disad list explodes, and other people do not explode. In such a system, there is no stamp-checking and no field for "alignment" on your sheet: you have enough Evil disads to be Evil, or you don't.

For what it's worth, Malloyd questioned the usefulness of this system on similar grounds (roughly, by saying "characters who pick a concept and then have an alignment mapped onto it might not like that alignment if it ignores the motivation behind the disads"), and that question remains unanswered. I think basing alignment on disad points fits will with the munchkinry that is in-universe endemic to DF, but at the same time, the stamp system fits well with DF's streamlining ethos.

[Zeta Blaze]

Originally Posted by McAllister

For what it's worth, Malloyd questioned the usefulness of this system on similar grounds (roughly, by saying "characters who pick a concept and then have an alignment mapped onto it might not like that alignment if it ignores the motivation behind the disads"), and that question remains unanswered. I think basing alignment on disad points fits will with the munchkinry that is in-universe endemic to DF, but at the same time, the stamp system fits well with DF's streamlining ethos.

Assuming the idea is salvageable maybe the solution is to a to make whether a trait counts against the number of points you have spent toward an alignment a limitation on loosely associated traits and not counting an enhancement and note both require an acceptable explanation. This also allows you to have a trueley evil demon who has some counter able means of hiding his evil for example the enhancement on his trait could have a gadget modifier and thus be revealable but normally kept hidden.

[PseudoFenton]

Originally Posted by Dwarf99

Yes. It's a good trait. End of story. A good trait doesn't make those who posess them overall to be good. This isn't the problem your post seems to indicate that it is.

Tip of the iceberg. There is no "end of story", because someone will assume something else (like Bruno's Holy Hand Grenade) and everything falls apart. Often during play. Codified alignments require constants, and behaviour is not constant... which leads me to your next point.

Originally Posted by Dwarf99

The idea is that pleasant and nice aren't always good, and that "helping people" can be done for very bad reasons.

Except that in DF, a Half-Infernal has no predescribed behaviour dictated to them via their racial lens (its all just "You have been Stamped Evil, proceed to be hurt by Good" and aesthetics). It also stipulates that regardless of their true morality (meaning they can act in every and any way they like) they will still always detect as Evil.

So yeah, fine, you can be "nice" in a "bad" way, but who cares? You can be "bad" in a "nice" way too. You can be selfish in a "looking out for myself because no one else will" Chaotic way, or in a "I want his cookie so I will take it" Evil way, or in a "I'm only being selfish now so I can be selfless later, as I'm trying to dance the line between good and evil by zig-zagging back and forth at high speed because that's what I think 'Balance' means" Neutral way too. This is where the alignment arguments start, and then they never end!

Player: "Oh, but I was only helping this old lady to look good, I'm really just being duplicitous, later on I'll betray everyone - honest!" GM: "Okay, but you've been saying that for five years of us playing this game, we all know you only wrote Evil as your alignment so you could use the over-powered hellish sword you were meant to destroy during the first session!" (Which, mark my words, is what DF players would do. DF is the Munchkin of GURPS, which is sort of ironic really...)

Just because GURPS has disadvantages keyed into behaviour doesn't really change any of this, it just means you now also have a random list of traits to cross-reference and argue over the meaning of. In addition to disputing if Honest, which is really just "follows the law" is Lawful, or if its neutral because you're not promoting the law... and oh god why doesn't it ever end?!



Rubber stamp. Just use the damn rubber stamp and be done with it!

[Christopher R. Rice]

Thanks for all who've replied, but please stay on topic. I'm just asking for where folks might view traits falling on the outlined axis, not whether "alignments" are appropriate to DF or not. Same things goes for hairsplitting on traits. Thanks again, I'm making notes. :-)