[Forum Philosophy] #10 - Alignment

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Week 10 (October 9th, 2009)
[note=Got and FFP Idea?]Send me a PM. Remember, we are discussing any topic relating to world design (but not system design), so fire away.[/note]
[ic=Philosophy Archive]
Week 1 - The Cost of Magic
Week 2 - Villains
Week 3 - Genre Conventions
Week 4 - Design Method
Week 5 - Characters
Week 6 - Theme
Week 7 - PCs in the World
Week 8 -  Politics
Week 9 - Government
Week 10 - Alignment
[/ic]

Alignment
Is it good, evil, or chaotic stupid?

[Nomadic]

My feelings have been that alignment is unnecessary unless you have a rules system based on it (such as a large chunk of alignment targeted spells). This would likely be the result of a black and white style battle of good vs evil/law vs chaos. That's fine but that's not my preference. I prefer the gray zone approach on alignment. The guy doesn't hate you because you're chaotic good and he's lawful good. He hates you because you are breaking the law and he believes the law should not be broken... etc.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

I don't like it because I don't feel the traits which any alignment system attempts to codify are ever that simple (moral or otherwise).  It's like the grey area argument, except I consider everything a grey area.

[LD]

It has its uses as a general guide- but unless it is an underlying part of the core system (a la DnD 1E's black/white morality and the planes and the demon/devil wars)- it can be superfluous or trite.

That is, the players won't see any legitimate reason to keep to an arbitrary alignment unless they receive some in-game benefits from keeping to that alignment.

Alignment may be useful for roleplaying... but often DMs punish people who don't uphold the "right" alignment (whether that be lawful good or neutral chaotic) by providing rewards to certain players and not to others.

Alignment can also be divisive in game sessions where players don't see any negative conequences from acting morally upright (which their sheet forces them to play as) or as chaotic theivish (which their sheet allows them to play as), whereas their co-players' game concepts are inherently interfered with by the one player's actions. Instead of being an argument about "this is a good idea for the Party to do and my character may do it" ; it becomes an argument about "my guy is a jerk, and wouldn't be CN if he didn't do this-- so he'd do this" (to justify basically evil actions) or "my guy is upstanding and proper because he is LG he refuses to say a lie, ever, even to save 100 people" (which may be justified... but even in the real world few people are rule deontologists) Nowhere in the latter two reckonings is there much consideration about what is best for the party or for the game playing group.

[Superfluous Crow]

Generally I don't use alignment in my games; there is simply no reason unless you use a system which depends on it. Things like "detecting alignment" seems particularly silly to me...
But if we look past that whole good/evil/lawful/chaotic-thing, Alignment could mean a lot of other things. Basically, Aligment is a "decision guide"; a guide as to how our character would react when presented with specific choices. Some might be able to mold a complete personality for their character in their head with ease, but others prefer to have something concrete to lean on such as alignment or list of character traits so that they can easliy distinguish between their own personality and that of their character.
Defining Aligment as a "decision guide" allows us to step past good/evil and look at other possibilities which might fit your game better. If you are playing in a game where religion plays a major role you might choose to describe your character as having a Faithful or Nonbeliever alignment, while an intrigue game set in the modern world might use Alignment to describe political opinions (liberal, democrat, anarchistic etc.).
 

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Generally I don't use alignment in my games; there is simply no reason unless you use a system which depends on it. Things like "detecting alignment" seems particularly silly to me...
But if we look past that whole good/evil/lawful/chaotic-thing, Alignment could mean a lot of other things. Basically, Aligment is a "decision guide"; a guide as to how our character would react when presented with specific choices. Some might be able to mold a complete personality for their character in their head with ease, but others prefer to have something concrete to lean on such as alignment or list of character traits so that they can easliy distinguish between their own personality and that of their character.
Defining Aligment as a "decision guide" allows us to step past good/evil and look at other possibilities which might fit your game better. If you are playing in a game where religion plays a major role you might choose to describe your character as having a Faithful or Nonbeliever alignment, while an intrigue game set in the modern world might use Alignment to describe political opinions (liberal, democrat, anarchistic etc.).
 

New paladin special ability: Smite Liberal!

Followed closely by: Detect Democrat!

[sparkletwist]

Alignment may be useful for roleplaying... but often DMs punish people who don't uphold the "right" alignment (whether that be lawful good or neutral chaotic) by providing rewards to certain players and not to others.

I think the problem here is that too many people think "my character is alignment X so I have to act a certain way" instead of basing the alignment on the sort of morality that they envision for that character. In that way, it becomes just another way you can describe the character in simple terms on the character sheet.

That said, earlier editions did make it pretty hard-and-fast, to a kind of stupid degree. Alignment languages were particularly stupid.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Sorry, I don't understand. I don't speak Evil very well. Can you word that in Lawful?

I took a semester of Good in high school. But I got a "C."

[Pair o' Dice Lost]

I generally appreciate alignment as a metagame construct; you can say so-and-so is lawful evil or similar and people have a general idea of their overarching "theme."  In-game, however, I agree with those who say that it's only useful as a mechanic and not as a classification of character actions or personality.  I subscribe to the philosophy that actions determine alignment rather than the reverse (as it obviously should be), so I've never had issues with falling paladins or "I am chaotic therefore I do X" scenarios, and I tweak the rules to make mortals much more vague when it comes to alignment detection and anti-alignment spells, so it doesn't impact my games all that much.

[Gamer Printshop]

While I certainly agree with most of the feelings regarding "alignment", however, Kaidan is being created for Pathfinder as a commercial project, so I have to stay within the boundries of a typical D&D/Pathfinder game, thus "alignment" exists.

Because Kaidan is governed by a cosmic construct called the Wheel of Life, order is demanded, and the living/undead authorities maintain that. Being intrinsically Japanese - discipline, expected practices, order in all things, being Lawful is paramount in this society. Thus working against the Wheel is chaotic and heretical, all imperial institutions work to suffocate chaos or unlawfulness.

While Kaidan is inherently evil, good and evil is generally blurred out over the concept of Law vs. Chaos. Upon that is Kaidan built.

Honor, on the other hand is a much more reliable mechanism and also exists in Kaidan. Honor to oneself, one's family, village, province, noble Lord, then to the Shogun and Emperor. Honor can be measured, and one's position in society depends upon it. Everyone, even the Yakuza and Ninja work within their own honor systems, with honor to the clan being the most important, while these groups are less concerned with honor among the higher castes, or acceptable social honor.

Thus Kaidan is most concerned with lawful behavior within code of Honor, recognized by all.

GP