[DF] Dragonlance

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Palladium has an alignment characteristic though they're more like personaility profiles (of course even in D&D Good v. Evil is morality, Law v. chaos is personaility profile). You get more or less XP for playing your alignment properly.

Chivalry & Sorcery 1e had an alignment characteristic rated from 1-20 measring how in line with honorable and churchly behavior you were. If you let PCs pick their alignment number it was alright as a statement of how they intended to play their characters. The early suggestion that you rolled it randomly on a D20 was pretty much a non-starter. Over 4 more editions it has evolved first to "piety" and then to "spiritulality" which determiens how likely you are to get miraculous aid. You may even track "current spirit" pts now.

Of course all Star Wars rpgs have had thire Light v. Dark mechnisms and their imitators tend to imitate that too.

Lots of more modern games have some sort of "corruption" mechanic. They just don't have the opposite of "corruption".

Sounds similar in some respects to the Resistance roll in GURPS for certain mental disadvantages. I look back at Classic and wonder why allowing higher IQ to allow easier resistance of certain mental disadvantages wasn't seen as a problem. The 4e mechanic is far better as it allows different degrees within the same character.

Daffy Duck in 'Ducking the Devil' (1957) is a prime example of how a GURPS-like mechanic work better than an alignment. After bringing in the Tasmanian Devil in (and admitting "I -am- a coward. A craven scared to death coward" in the process) one of the bills falls into the cage and Daffy goes berserk saying "Its mine, mine, mine." and beats the snot out of the Tasmanian Devil. "I may be a coward but I am a -greedy- littlecoward."

In D&D terms there is simply not enough to put an alignment on Daffy from one 10 minutes short but witha trait system you can give him two traits right after the bat Coward and Greed. Assigning 9 and 6 to the resistance you have a Daffy that behave much the way he does in later cartoons - especially when his greed overwhelms any sense of self preseravation.

Interestingly Sfdebris has a play through on one of the Star War games as a light side Sith shows that "evil" characters can do good things. Before Disney did the sequels there was Kreia who took a deep look at the two sides of the force and found both wanting though in different ways.

Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series is another example of how alignment is setting dependent - the Offices of Death and Evil have very specific behavior requirements of Neutral and Evil but are Zane and Perry really these alignments by the D&D system?

[maximara]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

In practice, it's irrelevant, because, given the nature of comic books, a graveyard would hold the Joker for little longer than an asylum cell does.

There was actually a plot line where the Joker found a pure version of the Lazarus Pit. He and Batman killed each other near this pit and they came back with amnesia.

It was implied that the Joker had (has?) an ability similar to Vandal Savage in the movie Doom where Cheetah calls his claim he is immortal and rips out his throat with her claws. He falls down bleeding all over the floor and then gets up and casually hits Cheetah in the face with the back of his hand.

So, yeh in regular continuity DC gave the Joker a variant of Unkillable 2. Wonderful. /s

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by maximara

It didn't help that examples of "proper" handling of alignment were basic FUBAR the Player. "It's not easy being good" (Dragon #51) by Roger Moore even had an example of a Paladin getting messed up because of the alignment system. The article basicly delt with the female and child surivors of a take out the werewolves problem mission. With lycanthropy you have a major problem as you have somebody with MPD as seen in the wolfman pictures ie Talbot going ' Please lock me up or kill me before I turn into a rampaging monster again and kill somebody.'

The Paladin knowing that there was no way to cure the poor wretchs and come next full moon they would terrorize the countryside had them painlessly executed at which point he got hosed by the alignment system because since it was daylight he had killed 'innocent' women and children. And this was an actual example of how to use alignment!

Honestly, that doesn't seem that far off to me. Situations like this are extremely difficult to judge the morality of, such that they can go either way. Consider similar situations. An innocent townsperson is being controlled by a cursed amulet, and the Paladin is aware of this. In the resulting fight, is it acceptable for the Paladin to just shove his sword through the innocent's chest, or should his vows require him to instead try to subdue the remove the amulet? If a reliable divination reveals a newborn will grow up to be a genocidal monster, is it acceptable for the Paladin to snatch it from its mother's arms and dash its brains out against a wall, or should he try to figure out a different way to ensure the prophecy doesn't come to pass? In the example case, the Paladin could have made arrangements to have the women and children restrained whenever there was going to be a full moon (or however involuntary shifting worked in that game).

Of course, were I GM and found myself in this situation (likely due to poor planning, as I'm not enough of a jerk to purposefully put a player in such a Catch 22 situation), if I decided executing the victims violated the Paladin's code, I wouldn't just let him/her go through with it and then say "Congratulations! You're now a Fighter with no Bonus Feats*!" Rather, I'd either just outright tell the player "That violates your vows as a Paladin, are you sure you want to go through with it?" or have the player roll against a relevant skill (probably Religion) to figure out if this was a violation... and on anything but a Critical Failure would probably say something along the lines of "You aren't sure if this behavior would be acceptable for a Paladin, perhaps you should consult an expert."

*Which is something I said to a player of a Samurai character who violated his code of Bushido, but I had given ample warning beforehand, and even let him take back the action that led to loss of his class features, now that he knew I was serious. He abandoned the character and made a different one not long later.


All that said, I'm not a huge fan of alignment systems. I do kind of like them as cosmic forces, but where a character still has sufficient volition to go against type. Of course, that's likely to end up with the type of setting where such forces can be summarized with "Good isn't always good, and Evil isn't always evil."

[Polydamas]

I don't think the Virtues and Sins of Pendragon are like an alignment system, they are more like advantages and disadvantages. But they do show that if you start from a clear definition of what those cosmic forces are, its much easier to make a coherent set of rules for alignment with them.

Moving back to the original topic, it seems like the three schools of wizardry and the chromatic v. metallic dragons are the key 'alignment-related' elements of the Dragonlance setting. Representing those is much more important than converting Protection from Evil into GURPS mechanics.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Moving back to the original topic, it seems like the three schools of wizardry and the chromatic v. metallic dragons are the key 'alignment-related' elements of the Dragonlance setting. Representing those is much more important than converting Protection from Evil into GURPS mechanics.

Both of which really just have to do with which gods you serve (the schools of wizardry have to do with the moons Solinari, Lunitari, and Nuitari, the dragon types are Takhisis and Paladine).

[Opellulo]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Both of which really just have to do with which gods you serve (the schools of wizardry have to do with the moons Solinari, Lunitari, and Nuitari, the dragon types are Takhisis and Paladine).

Which bring we back on the absurdity of allignments: in Dragonlance (and every other fantasy setting ever) Gods are based on the Olympians: fallible, emotional, petty even... Very mortal and relatable and yet they are tangled in a Cosmic duality that works with a morality system totally "alien" to everything else.

I'm a little biased but i like to put the blame on that catholic fanfiction about norse myths that's always popoing out in a way or another.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

Which bring we back on the absurdity of allignments: in Dragonlance (and every other fantasy setting ever) Gods are based on the Olympians: fallible, emotional, petty even... Very mortal and relatable and yet they are tangled in a Cosmic duality that works with a morality system totally "alien" to everything else.

Is it a cosmic duality? Or is it really just "In this setting, worshippers of X and worshippers of Y are good because that's how we defined evil and good".

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Opellulo

Which bring we back on the absurdity of alignments: in Dragonlance (and every other fantasy setting ever) Gods are based on the Olympians

Not The Dragon and the George (fourteenth-century religions just as speculative as in our world), Videssos (impersonal dualism with speculations about personal gods and prophets), the Hyborean Age, Lovecraft's vision of the Cthulhu Mythos (other scribes imported Christian ideas) ... I suspect Tékumel is different too.

Its hard to underestimate how much the late 20th century setting designers in the USA were influenced by Protestantism regardless of their personal convictions and practices (including retellings of world myths by 19th and early 20th century western Christians). People coming from a Christian background tended to read myths from other cultures in a certain way, such as seeing Set as a figure of evil. And the mid-20th-century stories of indifferent cosmic forces added to the mix.

But we are getting off topic. Dragonlance is not a very sophisticated setting, but it can be modelled without having to solve these general problems.

[Prince Charon]

The Middle Earth Role-Playing game (MERP), at least in second edition, has 'Alignment Role Traits,' which are vague and have a range of possible axes like 'Good....Neutral....Evil,' 'Free Enterprise....Neutral....Socialism,' or 'Metaphorical....Neutral....Literal.' How important the traits are in-game I'm not sure, as I read about the game but never played it, and the book isn't as well-organized as I'd like for this purpose (it honestly looks like the trait is just there because they thought it was supposed to be there, so it's being used as one of the ways your psychology is defined, along with 'Personality Role Traits' and 'Motivation Role Traits'). Maybe Rolemaster has more information, but I either don't have books for that, or do but can't find them.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

The Middle Earth Role-Playing game (MERP), at least in second edition, has 'Alignment Role Traits,' which are vague and have a range of possible axes like 'Good....Neutral....Evil,' 'Free Enterprise....Neutral....Socialism,' or 'Metaphorical....Neutral....Literal.' How important the traits are in-game I'm not sure, as I read about the game but never played it, and the book isn't as well-organized as I'd like for this purpose (it honestly looks like the trait is just there because they thought it was supposed to be there, so it's being used as one of the ways your psychology is defined, along with 'Personality Role Traits' and 'Motivation Role Traits'). Maybe Rolemaster has more information, but I either don't have books for that, or do but can't find them.

They have no mechanical weight at all. They're there to assist players in defining their character and deciding how they might act. There might be some bonuses for 'good roleplaying' in there somewhere, but that would be the only formal support for those traits.

I'm pretty sure they were put in there because the designers thought that characters should be more than just a bundle of bonuses, spells, and gear.