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Old 04-17-2022, 12:05 AM   #41
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The problem with 1e through 3e D&D (the editions I know)
4th edition did not use the 9 alignment axis (it had CE, E, N, G, LG) and didn't have abilities that detected or relied on alignment, making it ignorable. 5th edition went back to the 9 alignment axis but also doesn't generally have abilities that detect or rely on alignment, and more recently they've stopped listing alignment on creatures, so it's getting increasingly de-emphasized.
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Old 04-17-2022, 01:39 AM   #42
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The problem with 1e through 3e D&D (the editions I know) is that they had concepts like alignment languages, Protection Against Good, and alignment planes which suggest that alignment is built deeply into the world, but they did not have a coherent theory of what alignment is or fit it into the world. Part of this may be that in the early days they were scared of working in explicitly Christian elements and setting off another Satanic Panic, part of it may be the omnium gatherum inspirations they used which included both dualistic alignments and alignments as uncaring forces. This lead to issues like the eternal "is killing orc babies Good?" debate and the "lawful ******* / lawful stupid" paladin.
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!

To be fair many characters in comic books and cartoons of the 1960s through 1980s tended to be Lawful Stupid or Chaotic Crazy. Then you just had Icky Creepy.

Take the Silver Age Superman - a paragon of LG if there ever was one. Then you get into some of the stories...

"Have you ever wished you could see a grieving Man of Steel pushed to the limits of his sanity, having a make-out session with a robot, trolling beauty contests for Lois lookalikes and tricking a woman into marrying him under the pretense of being someone else? If so, then Superman #215 (Apr 1969) has the story you've been looking for." Nightwing in his Confessions of a Superman fan page

Let's not forget he "watches Brainiac and Luthor kill two people and because he really, really doesn't like the victims, turns a blind eye while they haul off the bodies (and even says, "Thanks")"

I should mention that Michael A. Stackpole lamblated the D&D alignment system in his Pulling Report
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Old 04-17-2022, 01:51 AM   #43
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4th edition did not use the 9 alignment axis (it had CE, E, N, G, LG) and didn't have abilities that detected or relied on alignment, making it ignorable. 5th edition went back to the 9 alignment axis but also doesn't generally have abilities that detect or rely on alignment, and more recently they've stopped listing alignment on creatures, so it's getting increasingly de-emphasized.
I'm surprised the alignment mechanic has lasted this long — it has long been maligned by players.

Yahtzee in his review of Fable 3 shows why labeling things "good" and "evil" is nonsense:

"I thought the game would end when the evil king was overthrown, but when the revolution batters down his door he basically says, "Fine, you be king then. Oh, and by the way, an evil black primordial slime is going to come and slaughter us all one year from now. Toodle-e-oo." (...) You're given a number of decisions to make as ruler and must choose whether to continue your brother's evil policies in order to raise the arbitrary sum of six million gold coins required to fight off the black goo after the year's up, or blow the entire treasury on making the lives of your citizens happy if short, the Logan's Run option."

Based on his review description every policy what would prevent your subjects from becoming Shxogoth chow are "evil". As Yahtzee put it "why can't we keep the evil policies until the Shoggoth has come and gone, then reverse them all? Surely one year of hardship is better than one year of picnics followed by Armageddon. But no, not an option. Castle Albion was apparently built on a leaking gas main."
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Old 04-17-2022, 02:27 PM   #44
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Take the Silver Age Superman - a paragon of LG if there ever was one. Then you get into some of the stories...


Let's not forget he "watches Brainiac and Luthor kill two people and because he really, really doesn't like the victims, turns a blind eye while they haul off the bodies (and even says, "Thanks")"
Nothing surprising about that, really. Both Superman and Batman started out as (relatively) realistic, for comics, vigilantes. That is, both would use lethal force, intimidation, and disregard legalities in pursuit of what they considered a higher good.

Since comics were aimed at (or were perceived to be aimed at) kids, that was eventually changed to a more 'black and white' moral arrangement, eventually becoming very simplistic, with contradictions that even kids could perceive.

It got loser again in the 70s and 80s when comics started being pitched more to a teenaged audience. But (and this touches on alignment, too), it rapidly became clear that the lack of black and white moral rules also led to story problems, as became somewhat blatant in the 90s.

Alignment in RPG settings serves as a way to make moral choices something other than personal preferences and 'my side' (and to justify the intense violence). If morality is purely the creation of the people and societies it applies to, it really doesn't mean anything, and you end up fairly quickly with 'power/winning is what really matters'. If morality is going to matter at all, it can't be 100% relative and subjective, because if it is Enlightenment logic will dissolve it away, leaving untrammeled self-interest.

('Murder hoboes' is a cliché for a reason.)

But if the objective alignment system ignores the complicated messiness of realistic situations, you end up with situations where the PCs are not able to distinguish between 'necessary evil' and 'blatant immorality', like the difference between killing a lycanthrope to save other people, or killing someone because they are inconvenient, or acting purely out of revenge and calling it 'justice', as opposed to genuinely seeking justice (but what precisely constitutes justice?). Among Palladium gamers, it's a cliché that a Principled alignment character (the highest good alignment) will get the party into more trouble than a Miscreant character (sort of their version of milder evil), because the Principled character, like the Paladin example, is obligated to behave in ways that ignore practicality.

(Of course it's in these gray areas that the most interesting character conflicts can exist, because it's awfully easy to go from 'necessary evil' to 'convenient' while lying to yourself. As Jim Butcher pointed out about moral conflicts, gray does exist. But he likened it to a software art program, where when you mix black and white to get gray, you reach what is effectively black well before you get all the way to the numbers that officially define 'black' in the program.)

Is slavery evil? Of course. Should a Good PC oppose it? Of course. Is a prisoner condemned to a chain gang for a crime a slave? Well, in the strictest technical sense yes, but suddenly things get complicated. What was the crime? Does it justify the punishment? If the answer is no, should the PC free the prisoner? What will the practical consequences for the PC's friends and family be if he does? Suddenly the simple rule has gotten very messy and complicated, but that doesn't mean the simple rule is invalid or wrong, just that it's messy when it comes into contact with reality.

Or to put it another way, is Batman responsible for the deaths the Joker inflicts because Batman refuses to terminate the Joker? It doesn't have an easy answer, and either 'yes' or 'no' leads to messy uncomfortable implications.

The alignment system endures because it actually serves a function. How well it serves it is another issue.
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Old 04-17-2022, 04:38 PM   #45
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Or to put it another way, is Batman responsible for the deaths the Joker inflicts because Batman refuses to terminate the Joker?
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.
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Old 04-17-2022, 06:08 PM   #46
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I'm surprised the alignment mechanic has lasted this long — it has long been maligned by players.
You'd be surprised by how many ardent defenders it has -- people who insist it's important for roleplaying, that the meaning of the alignments is actually well defined, etc.
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Old 04-17-2022, 09:48 PM   #47
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Default Re: [DF] Dragonlance

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Alignment in RPG settings serves as a way to make moral choices something other than personal preferences and 'my side' (and to justify the intense violence). If morality is purely the creation of the people and societies it applies to, it really doesn't mean anything, and you end up fairly quickly with 'power/winning is what really matters'. If morality is going to matter at all, it can't be 100% relative and subjective, because if it is Enlightenment logic will dissolve it away, leaving untrammeled self-interest.
Two points: you are assuming that alignment = morality or righteousness, but in many of the inspirations of D&D the cosmic forces were amoral and a wise person kept as far away from them as possible. This is where the idea of Neutrals seeking balance comes from.

And what systems other than D&D have an alignment mechanic?
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Old 04-17-2022, 10:05 PM   #48
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You'd be surprised by how many ardent defenders it has -- people who insist it's important for roleplaying, that the meaning of the alignments is actually well defined, etc.
"For King and Country" (1985) touched on that; alignment worked best in settings where the motivations of kings and churches were unimportant other than offering bounties 'to take care of the baddies'. War and politics were borderline non existent and if they did exist they were so overly simple that they were more campy than an episode of the 1960s Batman TV show.

In the absence of actual laws and religious beliefs, alignment was a way to tell a player when he was getting out of line. But even the definitions of what the alignments changed and what alignment the gods had also changed.

As Moore's "it's not Easy Being Good" article shows alignment could be easily misused - even by people that supposedly "understand" the system: "Killing the captives could well be the only alternative the Paladin is left with, yet if done the DM might say it was evil and remove the player’s alignment and status as a Paladin."

Even before players grow out of this simple Silver Age mentality alignment is more of a hinderance than a help because what an alignment means has to be defined. But "how does one define concepts that in the real world have no absolute meaning? There is no way to do it except to choose a particular value system and declare that it applies universally to the gaming universe."

How can Tiamat who is the embodiment of Chaos be Lawful Evil as Deities and Demigods goes out of its way to talk about Taimat's battle with her son Marduk but ignores the fact that in the Babylon mythology Marduk and his siblings had gone off and murdered her husband Apsu to usurp his throne.

Another example is in regards to Athena and Medusa. Athena turned Medusa into the snake haired thing for Medusa being raped in her temple by Poseidon because Medusa 'desecrated Athena's sacred space'. The fanfic "The Watchman" has Rorschach read Athena the riot act for not only that but giving Perseus the means to kill Medusa in her sleep.

And yet Athena is given the alignment Lawful Good in the 1ed of Deities and Demigods?! On what planet and using what official definition is that acceptable behavior for LG?!

And people wonder why in some early games Paladins acted like Kore in the webcomic Goblins and kept all their Paladin abilities and alignment.

GURPS Religion used more general terms like Benevolent, Malevolent, Meddlesome, Indifferent, Observant, Oblivious, Forthright, Mysterious, Codal, and/or Random
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Old 04-17-2022, 10:37 PM   #49
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T

And what systems other than D&D have an alignment mechanic?
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".
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Old 04-17-2022, 10:50 PM   #50
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And what systems other than D&D have an alignment mechanic?
Pendragon rates characters on each of the seven cardinal virtues and deadly sins...
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