The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: brainface

QuoteMy own take on this is that the zoological definition of altruism is not "good"; protecting your family and your friends is instinct, and most higher order animals will do it. But, protecting a stranger, and risking your life in the process, is a good deed.

also[/i] instinct, man. Herd animals will protect other members of the herd even if they're not related. and a human's definition of herd can be exceptionally broad. I'm not saying it's not good, but it's not contrary to instinct. ;)

(lucifer principle, ftw)

Isn't that what I said later? Altruism is only truely altruism when it, in no physical way, benefits you. Helping a member of your herd helps the survival of your herd. And, animals in a herd are generally related to each other in some way.

What would be contrary to instinct is helping someone when it doesn't benefit you, or even when it hurts you. Think of it as marterdom on a tiny scale; if you're a well fed person and you give your meal over to a starving person, you'll suffer a little with hunger until you get your next meal, but you've aleviated the suffering of someone else in the process. Since you were entirely capable of performing said action without hurting yourself or others, the action is good.

Killing a million people to save one person's life would not be good, in fact that would be very evil by the nature of D&D's alignment system. Killing someone in self defence is a netural action; murder is an evil action (again, unless the creature is irreproachable).

Remember, the existance of creatures in D&D that are "always" said alignment is something alien to our world. The only thing in our world that is "always" an alignment are animals who are not capable of higher thinking. I wouldn't want to go out on a limb and say which animals other than us are (or deny the fact that some mentally disabled or insane individuals might be so far gone that it would be unfair to say they're anything but neutral).

But if you read my post fully, I did go on to say that altruism, when it benefits you, is not good; it is neutral.

I agree with what has been said earlier about specific types of worlds requiring different types of alignment styles to fit their themes, and how the law/chaos axis and the good/evil axis don't go well together. Using one or the other is definitely the better bet for a game, though all of the changes that will have to be made to the system may be tedious.

Using only one axis seems more likely to bring up a conflict between the Subjective and Objective Approaches (as addressed in the Book of Vile Darkness and spoken of here), especially when you look at it from the Law/Chaos point of view. Following a certain set of laws may seem good and lawful in one society, but it may be completely different in another. This goes the same with a Good/Evil conflict, because different places may have different opinions. The subjective approach, regardless of whether you use nine, three, or two alignments in your games, seems to be the most simple method in this case.

An idea I had once for alignment removal was to keep good and evil objective, but leave holy and unholy weapons and spells and the like. However, these effects would only function against fiends and undead (holy), or celestials (unholy). To counteract this, certain creatures that were once unnaturally benevolent or malginant could be added to the lists of celestials and fiends, though they would retain their actual creature types. Hell, for a big twist, unholy weapons could even work against humanoids.

I would like to start by saying that what I've written here is against D&D alignment and in no way implies that I cannot simply drop it and play my own way.

Quote from: XeviatYou decide how you want to play your character, then you look over the 9 alignment descriptions in the PHB and decide which best fits your character. People who object to objective alignment definitions are generally more chaotic people. And why are you getting slapped in the face for being you in game? Who cares if your character is Lawful Good or Chaotic Neutral; both characters can be heroes. It's about their motivation.

What if none of the alignment descriptors fit my character?  Let's say the problem is that I want to play good in a different way than D&D says good is: can't do it, since D&D says certiain things mean good, and going against them mean you are at least neutral.  That's slap number 1: I say I'm good, the game says I'm not.  Slap number 2 comes because D&D then says "Good (in D&D terms) people are the greatest people", and that makes me feel inferior.  "Bad person!  Bad!  You do not fit our beliefs so we punish you phsychologically."

Quote from: XeviatI said that higher order animals are capable of altruism, and thus altruism itself is not a good act.

By "altruism" you mean that definition you gave, not the "altruism" that D&D assumes: making sacrifices that don't get you any material gain.

Quote from: XeviatA good person doesn't like to see innocents suffer, and a good hero seeks to keep innocents from suffering. Your average people generally don't, because they don't have the capacity. Not helping someone if you have no way to help them is not an evil act, but isn't good. Being good doesn't mean everything you do has to be a good act.

I agree with you, except that I think Good to mean that sometimes you have to let people suffer if they keep choosing actions that make them suffer.  I'm not talking about someone who can't get themselves out of poverty, I'm talking about where people carry on a terrible war on their own choices.

Quote from: XeviatAgain, not saving someone is not evil, it's neutral. I think the problem many people have with the D&D alignment system is that they forget about neutrality. There are actions that are neither good nor evil, and the vast majority of actions are so. Eating a sandwich is a neutral action; giving a sandwich to a needy person in such a matter that it in no way benefits you (except for possibly making you feel good) is a good act; sacrificing a sandwich to an evil deity would be an evil action.

I think the problem is that you say these things and then don't realize that if most of the world is neutral than that last little bit may not really be this Good/Evil you think of.  It may still be Neutral.

Quote from: XeviatWhy not? A demon is capable of nothing but spreading death and destruction. They are beings composed of pure evil and chaos, and they seek nothing but the destruction of all non-demon kind. Killing a demon prevents it from committing those evils, because 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999% of the time, a demon will never rise to become something else. There are cases, but those are rare.

What I object to is D&D taking that choice away from the demon.  If I played in a game like that my aim would become finding the source of what made demons evil and destroying it so they could have choice.  I said that killing demons might be necessary if there is no other way, but don't call it a good aciton because when you do you encourage people to do it without thinking of how to solve the larger problem.

Also, potential to cause evil is no reason to kill someone.  If you follow that ideal, then you should kill everyone you come across, for they all have the capacity to do evil.  I will state again that if one really does have reason to believe that a being will hurt someone then killing may be necessary.  But potential is not a guarantee.

Quote from: XeviatLook at Hellboy as a good example. His "father" committed an act of compassion by saving him, and lucked out when Hellboy became a being of good. But, Hellboy's own existance lends to evil, being the bringer of the appocolypse, and if they had killed him, it would have served the greater good. It's like arguing that it isn't good to wipe out a horrible bacterial disease, just because the bacteria can't help but kill.

And so as this "greater good" is said to be served than any action is justified.  So if I sterilize someone because the are mentally impared and I don't wish it to pass into the rest of the population I am being good because I am serving the "greater good".  Millions of resource-draining extra people live in the world, so if I am to serve the "greater good" I should kill them to allow the rest to have access to the resources they would have used.

"Greater good" is something that someone says when they need to justify the destruction of a few.

I think this ultimatey comes down to an issue of realism-- some people like the idea of simplified morality, the ability to tell "the good guys from the bad guys". Demons are evil because their evil, that's a fact. There's nothing inherently wrong with a clear-cut style of gaming, especially if there's a good reason why things are that way. (And yes, "they are birthed from a plan composed of literal evil and have done nothing but torture and maim mortals for their entire existence" is enough provacation, in a clear-morality situation, to kill the demon. In my book.)

I tend to use alignment in my games simply because it makes the DMs job easier. The DM need merely to remember that 'this bartender is chaotic good' and then flesh him out from there.

But I don't let the alignments define the characters (NPCs, I mean) too much. Almost all of the sentient beings in my setting are some kind of neutral (especially since there are no other planes for demons or angels to come from). 'Good' and 'Evil' are relativistic terms; while sacrificing an innocent to the gods may be 'evil' in one country, it might be one of the highest displays of piety one can show in another.

Though, I don't get rid of the Good-Evil alignment axis entirely; it is fun when a player casts detect evil on an NPC and have it show negative, then have the player be branded as blasphemous and subsequently roasted over a spit.

Then maybe it will make you easier to use the BoVD and BoED definitions of Vile and Exalted, and just say that everyone else is Neutral.

I do realize that the vast majority of people are neutral; people want to be good, but most people don't have the will to do it. I'll stop saying anything more on this before I begin to offend.

I do think that removing alignment entirely is a blow to the game. Being able to see auras is part of the fiction; your actions having an impact on you is part of the fiction. Maybe some people would be more happy using Taint and discarding alignment in favor of taint: L5R does it and it's fine in that setting. Then again, L5R ignores the injustices the nobility puts on the serfs in feudal society ... but what ever.

I'm ducking out.

QuoteI do think that removing alignment entirely is a blow to the game. Being able to see auras is part of the fiction; your actions having an impact on you is part of the fiction.

I disagree.  I think alignment can effectively be removed, or even transmuted in the game, without detracting from it.

QuoteIsn't that what I said later? ...

What would be contrary to instinct is helping someone when it doesn't benefit you, or even when it hurts you. Think of it as marterdom on a tiny scale; if you're a well fed person and you give your meal over to a starving person, you'll suffer a little with hunger until you get your next meal, but you've aleviated the suffering of someone else in the process. Since you were entirely capable of performing said action without hurting yourself or others, the action is good.

instictive[/i]. It isn't always the strongest instinct, and it's only one of many (some of which aren't near as nice). We don't like to see people suffer, even if they're strangers and live in a country we can't pronounce. Hell, humans don't generally even like to see animals of other species suffer. Even if we'll make people suffer for any number of reasons, typically having to do with stronger instincts (like, you know, territorialism).

QuoteBut if you read my post fully, I did go on to say that altruism, when it benefits you, is not good; it is neutral.

eliminates[/i] altruism. :) Even that "sgoogly feeling for having done something good" is a physical benefit, if you think about it in terms of hormones, etc. Hell, getting your name in a book of martyrs would be considered a benefit by many people.

untangental: as far as alignment goes in games, i just write "NG" on my character sheet and act however i want. It works out pretty good. My group stopped having "but that's not your character's alignment!" arguments after we got out of high school. Of course, back then, the biggest problem was 2e druids, who had to be true neutral, back when true neutral as really serious about being truely neutral.

Quote from: brainfaceuntangental: as far as alignment goes in games, i just write "NG" on my character sheet and act however i want. It works out pretty good.<snip>

I always write CN, and if the DM sees fit to change my alignment, then I let him.  I personally believe most of my characters fall in the range of CN-CE, but most DM's refuse to let you play evil, so yeah...

I think alignment should be revamped to focus on the origin of the motivation rather than the means to the end. For example, I've already mentioned my alignment system: Id vs. Ego. Ethical vs. Aesthetic. It just makes more sense to me that some people will be internally focused (monks) whereas others will be more externally focused (paladins, barbarians). Also, while many will take up a cause (paladins, clerics... even Nazis) others seek only self-gratification (bards, hedonists... Americans). I don't know... it makes more sense to see alignment as the source of one's behavior rather than the manifestation of the behavior.

On an unrelated side note: I played a spiker dread necromancer. I killed things. I worked for our "benevolent monarch". I reminded the rogue to always (ALWAYS) check for traps. Only two things I roleplayed were that I was paranoid (King's just having us kill kobolds 'cause he's RACIST) and that I rolled in the corpses of my fallen enemies (Don't mind me! Just gathering material components). So was I evil for being a necromancer, even though I was doing exactly what the other players were doing (killing "evil" and taking its stuff)? Was I good for my reluctance to kill unnecessarily? Was I lawful for following orders and doing it anyway? Or was I chaotic for ignoring societal norms? 'Cause I sure as HELL wasn't neutral!

When I first started thinking about creating my own setting, I knew it wouldn't be Eberron.  In point of fact, some parts of it are actually refutations of Eberron, because while some of it is spectacular, some of it just blows.

The big problem has to be alignments.

The Eberronian approach to alignments is to treat them as flags.  Or perhaps I should say as gangs.  You join, you fly the colors, and you better not ever join a different one.  It doesn't really matter what you do, as long as you stay true to your crew.

I've said it before.  I'll undoubtedly say it again.  A monarch who helps negotiate a peace treaty, then secretly prepares to take over her countries neighbors in a new war of aggression on the apparent grounds that she's just 'the best ruler of them all' is not a good person.  

For a while there, I was thinking of ways to avoid such an empty interpretation of alignment while retaining it for its various supernatural effects - which would, if carried to their logical conclusion, lead back around to the empty alignments as gangs idea.

And then it hit me.

Embrace the emptiness.

Io, the overlord of the Dragon Gods, is often referred to as the Lord of the Nine due to his embrace of all of the alignments in a perfect neutrality.  I wanted him to have a central place in the pantheon of my world, but that whole 'Lord of the Nine' thing blew the attempt of verisimilitude I was trying to produce.

Unless, of course, the matrix of Good/Evil and Law/Chaos was an explicit part of the nature of the universe.

So here's the conceit I came up with - long ago, the nascent civilization of the dragons was at war for the future of existence against alien Outsiders, castoffs from the beginning of time who were inimical to dragonkind.  The dragon gods enacted a ritual that essentially stamped all reality with a moral character that would permit freedom of action but at the same time preclude a significant intrusion from entities that couldn't confine themselves to such a moral organization.

In essence, this setting can be played in without recourse to alignments if you insist, but at its deepest level it depicts a universe that was designed by an inherently Lawful mind, a mind so omnipotent that it can even incorporate Chaos into its thought.

That's not the whole story - the Creator, for example, is not Io but is an Overgod who can only rarely be invoked by even the mightiest of it's children - but those are the broad strokes.

To answer original question:

I use aligment as relativistic tool, always in realtion to main or centeral culture of the campaign. So good is, what is good in terms of main culture and evil is what stands as 'disgusting or wrong'- from that point of view.

Law - chaos axis is more tradition - breaking traditions axis.

It works well enough and doesn't seem to limit my player's motivations or actions, only the means they can choose to fullfill their goals. And they are all experienced players, some even have experience in original D&D.

Quote from: DeeLThe dragon gods enacted a ritual that essentially stamped all reality with a moral character that would permit freedom of action but at the same time preclude a significant intrusion from entities that couldn't confine themselves to such a moral organization.

Can you explain this better?  Something sounds weird: it prevents outsiders, which includes the largest group of alignment-realted things, from entering the universe?

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawSomething sounds weird: it prevents outsiders, which includes the largest group of alignment-realted things, from entering the universe?

Nono, please excuse me - this was a protection against the Far Realms, not against all outsiders.  The Great Wheel cosmology is in effect, functioning almost like a shield - the planes of Alignment stand metaphorically between the Material Plane and the Far Realms, keeping the less robust reality from being corrupted into madness by the nameless powers of the Far.  

Sorry, could have gotten that better.

I have created the following to give an outline of alignments as I percieve them to be, complete with examples from literature, movies and TV. Mostly Star Trek and Lost.

LG
â,¬Â¢   Lawful good characters believe in honesty, integrity, honor and following the law. They feel that abiding by the law is the best way to achieve peace and happiness for all people. However, they act in â,¬Å"the spirit of the lawâ,¬Â in the sense that they are willing to go against a law that they see as unjust. Their true commitment is to whatever code they personally believe is best for the general populace, almost always including a commitment to honesty and honor.
â,¬Â¢   Worf, Captain Sisko

NG
â,¬Â¢   A Neutral Good character is an altruist. He helps others and tries to achieve the greatest good possible. He wouldnâ,¬,,¢t hesitate to tell a lie to accomplish something good, but is aware that lies are usually not the way to go. He does not commit himself to any particular code, rather taking things on a case by case basis, always looking for the greatest good.
â,¬Â¢   Julian Bashir, Jack from Lost, Will Turner

CG
â,¬Â¢   A Chaotic Good character believes that everyone, when given the proper opportunity will choose good over evil. He believes in freedom of thought, action and expression, with only enough law to prevent actual evil from taking place. He believes that any restrictions placed on people are inherently bad. He does the right thing in all situations as he sees it, with little regard for the opinions and ideals of other people or organizations.
â,¬Â¢   Locke from FFIII, Locke from Lost, Major Kira

LN
â,¬Â¢   A Lawful Neutral character is completely committed to duty. He has his honor and his duty and he does what is required of him with little regard for the consequences. He is methodical and cautious, not going out of his way to help others, but also avoiding unnecessary harm. He would not hurt an innocent person unless that person was a direct threat to carrying out his duty or purpose as he sees it. He wouldnâ,¬,,¢t have a problem with helping others, as long as it doesnâ,¬,,¢t conflict with his own personal goals.
â,¬Â¢   Marius from Vampire Chronicles, Commadore Norrington

N
â,¬Â¢   A True Neutral character is committed to something other than law, chaos, good or evil. Generally these people are very single-minded, obsessed even. The other possibility for True Neutral characters are the apathetic. The apathetic do not do anything risky. They avoid becoming attached to any sort of ideal or greater purpose. They seek their own personal goals, like survival while trying to avoid getting sucked into anything outside themselves. They are not cruel and donâ,¬,,¢t harm others, but consider helping others to be a waste of time. They will follow laws most of the time, but not hesitate to break them if it isnâ,¬,,¢t too risky.
â,¬Â¢   Sawyer from Lost (on the island), Quark, Shadow from FFVI, Magus from Chrono Trigger

CN
â,¬Â¢   Chaotic Neutral characters are very unpredictable. They have their own personal goals, but have a very unplanned approach. They go one direction and switch directions without apparent reason. They are usually prone to do things randomly that suit their fancy at that particular moment, but generally this does not include good or evil actions. They are rarely cruel, but may torture a hated enemy. They are hardly benevolent, but will most likely help their friends. They are very self-centered with no real regard for the world outside themselves and their immediate contacts. Their commitment to law and society is simply to avoid getting in trouble. If they want to do something illegal they will likely find a way to do it without getting caught.
â,¬Â¢   Jack Sparrow, Q, Garak

LE
â,¬Â¢   A Lawful Evil person uses authority and structure to his own benefit. This is a sort of tyrannical approach, using methodical and logical approaches to accomplish goals, without any worry as to who is harmed in the process. They are true to their word and their duty, but seek to rule over others. They are not capricious or pointlessly cruel, but will not hesitate to hurt someone if they are in the way or to kill a servant that failed them. Usually servants of evil who serve faithfully are also Lawful Evil, even if they have no ambitions of their own.
â,¬Â¢   Emperor Ghestal, Darth Vader, Voldemort, Weyoun, Davy Jones, Arthas

NE
â,¬Â¢   Neutral Evil people are out for personal satisfaction. They try to avoid betraying others unless it is necessary, but will do it if they have to. They try to avoid relying on others as much as possible, and seek their own goals over all other concerns. They do evil whenever it is convenient and are out for personal gain and power.
â,¬Â¢   Lucius Malfoy, Gul Dukat, Senator Palpatine, Kefka (Early game), Sawyer from Lost (before the island)

CE
â,¬Â¢   Chaotic Evil people are probably the most fearsome of the evil alignments, simply because they are so unpredictable. They do whatever they can get away with, with no real regard for future consequences. Usually they delight in cruelty and destruction, but not necessarily. It is entirely possible that they simply do evil when it is convenient and have no real compunctions about far-reaching consequences. They are usually very hedonistic, seeking the pleasure of the moment over all other concerns. Their concern for law only extends to the immediate concern of not being caught or punished. They are prone to excess, and usually have very little restraint. Unlike a neutral evil or lawful evil person, they would not hesitate to murder someone for angering them if they could get away with it. May be cautious enough to accomplish their goals, but will do anything necessary to achieve them.
â,¬Â¢   Sephiroth, Kefka (World of Ruin), Fenris Greyback in Harry Potter, Bellatrix Lestrange, Attila the Hun, Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Drusilla from Buffy, Faith (before the coma)

Obviously lots of choices for interesting characters within alignments, but alignments give you a general idea of what a person is like.