A eulogy for Alignment in CRPGs

[Shitty Kitty]

I admire your tenacity, sheep, but at some point you have to realize the corollary to "winners never quit and quitters never win" is "if you never win and never quit, you're a fucking retard"

That's a longwinded way to call yourself a retard, but ok...

I won the argument pages ago. You've done nothing but strawman, prevaricate, insult and whine when you get your usual bullshit thrown back in your face by someone with sharper teeth and wits. You're in the denial stage of grief and you're going to have to move on eventually.

I have never seen Orcs written in a fashion that implies they're anything but habitually bellicose and desirous of the conquest and enslavement of other beings

Bitch please, are you for real? I'm not sure, but I think the decline of properly evil Orcs any Evil Overlord would enjoy commanding into noble savages (uuurgh) started with WarCraft III. It went downhill from there.

Ok, so we're going outside of D&D-type stuff? WarCraft has always been a crap knockoff of WHF (and it was originally going to be a WHF product IIRC), and I sure hope you don't call any Blizzard product from that world to date an RPG proper. The Orsimer I'll grant, but they're actually a hell of a lot more than a noble-savage trope. Noble savages don't typically produce disciplined front-line soldiers and top-notch weapons and armor.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Wintersun, for example?
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/95545
Hell, even Requiem actually ties divine favour to the crime system (although it does it in too broad strokes to actually be particularly good about it).

I actually clicked on this thing and risked the sanity loss.

Stendarr

Can follow this deity: everyone
Racial starting deity for: Breton / High Elf / Imperial / Nord / Wood Elf

“Clear dungeons of evil. Slay daedra and the undead. Complete side quests for the people of Skyrim. Never openly break the laws of Skyrim. Never practice the foul summoning arts.”

• Shrine blessing - Fortify Block: Block 10% more damage.
• Follower - Sacred Resolve: Take X% less attack damage from daedra and undead (based on favor with Stendarr).
• Devotee - Channel Divinity: During prayer, you may spend 10% favor to gain X% improved attack, defense and healing (based on favor with Stendarr) for 5 minutes or 3 battles.

lol at the 4th wall breaking writing on this autistic garbage.

this is what you think would be a substitute replacement for alignments? from your description, I thought there would actually be something to this, but it's basically just "play Skyrim normally and larp that you're worshiping some deity".

 

[rusty_shackleford]

there shouldn't be any sort of restrictions on what a character can do due to their alignment.

After thinking on this further, I'd support a will save(or whatever is equivalent in the used system) to perform an action that is very opposed to the character's alignment.
e.g., a Lawful Good character performing a Chaotic or Evil action would have to make a will saving throw.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

there shouldn't be any sort of restrictions on what a character can do due to their alignment.

After thinking on this further, I'd support a will save(or whatever is equivalent in the used system) to perform an action that is very opposed to the character's alignment.
e.g., a Lawful Good character performing a Chaotic or Evil action would have to make a will saving throw.

And this is thoroughly realistic and offers more depth to the way you RP your character.
Suppose a mobster comes to you IRL and says: "I'll offer you 100.000$ to off John Johnson, decapitate him and bring his head to me." Even though the sum might seem appealing to your average man and make him even consider accepting and going through with the act, just how many would actually have the will to commit the said deed?
It's all about inner disposition, and that is precisely what alignment is. It's also quite useful in the context of lower tier roleplayers who'll neglect the important aspect of separating from your character, just for the sake of simply doing something with the character, be it for reward, exp, a magical item - you name it.

Whoever has actual DnD experience has surely seen this at some point - players going in stark contrast to the personality and alignment of their character, in a mere blink of an eye, either because they want to profit on a meta level or they enjoy the railroad and simply want to be led through by the DM.

All in all, an average man can't in most of the cases, go against his personal principles and inner motivations to commit an act in stark opposition to them. This is another aspect where alignment is handy both as a system of guidelines and a strict mechanical framework to make the character more realistic and relatable. When put in terms of alignment, a chaotic neutral character will have far greater ease in accepting the offer mentioned above, in comparison to a lawful good one.

 

[Sarathiour]

I admire your tenacity, sheep, but at some point you have to realize the corollary to "winners never quit and quitters never win" is "if you never win and never quit, you're a fucking retard"

I can't even .

Most retarded sentence of the thread.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

I admire your tenacity, sheep, but at some point you have to realize the corollary to "winners never quit and quitters never win" is "if you never win and never quit, you're a fucking retard"

I can't even .

Most retarded sentence of the thread.

I explained pretty succinctly why alignment is stupid, pointless, unhelpful and easily omitted/replaced by more robust systems that lead to better roleplaying and reactivity. You and your moron friends have screeched NUH UH, proceeded to contradict themselves repeatedly SOMETIMES IN A SINGLE POST, and flung insults which I proceeded to fling back with vigor because I'll be honest, once you crossed the Rubicon of being too dumb to explain proper roleplay to I wasn't going to cast many more pearls before the swine here and calling you idiots is fun.

Cope, seethe and munchkin elsewhere, dumbasses. I won and will keep winning, you lost and will keep losing, and you're just spinning your wheels over a system that by now nearly every RPG system has discarded for being pointless skub-bait at best and ex-post-facto justification for being murderhobos at worst. "You can't even". What are you, a 14 year old girl? You can't even roleplay, you can't even read, you can't even deal with being left behind? Too bad. Build a bridge and get over it.

there shouldn't be any sort of restrictions on what a character can do due to their alignment.

After thinking on this further, I'd support a will save(or whatever is equivalent in the used system) to perform an action that is very opposed to the character's alignment.
e.g., a Lawful Good character performing a Chaotic or Evil action would have to make a will saving throw.

And this is thoroughly realistic and offers more depth to the way you RP your character.
Suppose a mobster comes to you IRL and says: "I'll offer you 100.000$ to off John Johnson, decapitate him and bring his head to me." Even though the sum might seem appealing to your average man and make him even consider accepting and going through with the act, just how many would actually have the will to commit the said deed?
It's all about inner disposition, and that is precisely what alignment is. It's also quite useful in the context of lower tier roleplayers who'll neglect the important aspect of separating from your character, just for the sake of simply doing something with the character, be it for reward, exp, a magical item - you name it.

Whoever has actual DnD experience has surely seen this at some point - players going in stark contrast to the personality and alignment of their character, in a mere blink of an eye, either because they want to profit on a meta level or they enjoy the railroad and simply want to be led through by the DM.

All in all, an average man can't in most of the cases, go against his personal principles and inner motivations to commit an act in stark opposition to them. This is another aspect where alignment is handy both as a system of guidelines and a strict mechanical framework to make the character more realistic and relatable. When put in terms of alignment, a chaotic neutral character will have far greater ease in accepting the offer mentioned above, in comparison to a lawful good one.

Violation of player agency is verboten. You want to commit murder for a payday, you do it, but there will and should be knock-on consequences regardless of your character's status. Alignment has done little to nothing to curb meta play, and anyone who is predisposed to that bullshit in the first place is going to find a way to do it until you rocksfall them or one or more people at that table storms off in a huff anyway.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

Lazy and unassertive DM's have done little to nothing to curb meta play

FTFY, thank me later fam.

Cope, seethe and munchkin elsewhere, dumbasses. I won and will keep winning

 

[Shitty Kitty]

Also, the implication that a mobster either IRL or in a game is going to approach someone for an assassination job who has a reputation for not being someone who would accept murder-for-hire is in no way approximating any sort of depth, quasi-realism or anything of the sort. Either the mobster is patently retarded (and you don't get far in organized crime by being a complete idiot) or something else is going on. "Hey, I need John Johnson whacked. Who am I gonna ask: the person with a badge and a spotless record, or a scumbag who's already demonstrated he doesn't have any real qualms about murder?" As a DM, sure, you can set up that encounter, but don't be surprised if your players with characters focused on benevolence look at you funny and either flatly refuse IC or roll to subdue the mobster and drag him in for questioning instead of going "wow, my character is hard-up for cash, this sounds like a great idea to them despite having basically no idea who this John Johnson is or what he's done".

Framing alignment as a matter of inner disposition implies that characters or people simply think "I'm going to not do murder-for-hire simply because that's bad/illegal." Only utter simpletons or high-functioning psychopaths use that as a framework for decisions. You don't do murder because you find it extremely distasteful, have no stomach for killing in cold blood, think that the abrogation of life for a payday cheapens life itself immeasurably, and rightfully worry about the taking of a life without extremely good cause setting a horrific precedent for your own demise, and the consideration for the abstractions of "law" and "good" is secondary and flow from those more deeply-rooted feelings and thoughts.

There are even gameworlds and/or regions within those worlds where legally-sanctioned assassination is a thing, and there are assassination targets who are very bad people and whose death could easily be considered betterment of the world at the cost of one life. Suddenly you flip the idea of "killing someone who is not personally and directly threatening the life of your character is a 'CE' action" into an 'LG' action by contextualizing it as a matter of "greater good" and this malleability of the act of assassination is even acknowledged in 3.x frameworks - the Slayer of Domiel PrC is, for all intents and purposes, an Assassin for the "good guys", mechanically near-identical right down to the use of subterfuge, sneak-attacking and utilization of toxins. He just does it to the "right targets" for the "right reasons" by code, and it's not even like an Assassin is incapable of killing the EXACT SAME TARGET either (and the character might even rationalize the act in terms of "the target was going to do something so harmful that even a malevolent prick like me has to draw the line somewhere - an assassin can't exactly do brisk business in a world that has, say, ceased to exist"). The end result would be the same, and the malevolent assassin might do it for NO PAY simply because he thinks long-term. From a non-telepathic, non-retarded DM's standpoint all that can be observed is results of actions taken, and intent of the player's character in-world can only be inferred after the fact or in OOC discussions/notes, which the DM is obligated to take at face value anyway. It's unhelpful and unwise to lie to a DM, and it's unhelpful and unwise for a DM to assume at any point that a player is lying.

This is another failing of the alignment system - it's utilized as a safeguard against players metagaming and misleading the DM by mechanically punishing certain types of character for straying from it, at said DM's discretion. Except there are already ways to "punish" this present, in the form of deity ethos, reputational consequences and simple "unforeseen consequences" like the power vacuum left behind from a dead murderous tyrant. Some of these lead into new campaigns, new opportunities for the player characters to do things.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

I admire your tenacity, sheep, but at some point you have to realize the corollary to "winners never quit and quitters never win" is "if you never win and never quit, you're a fucking retard"

I can't even .

Most retarded sentence of the thread.

I like how these two sentences prompted the above flurry of defensive text walls.

It doesn’t matter how many times you prove the opposite to anti-alignment spergs, they keep strawmaning the alignment system as either a straight jacket or a funnel designed to turn everyone into either Dudley Do-Right or some mustachioed caricature of a villain.

Both strawmen are provably false per the source material and actual D&D games and campaigns like PST, but they just keep posting them insistently, hoping the sheer volume of text they spew will convince everyone that alignments are bad.

I’m just not sure why they try so hard, given that WotC already seem to be streamlining alignments out of existence and care more about Diversity, with orcs that are just like humans only with superpowers, than battles of good verses evil.

You’re already getting the watered down D&D you want so badly. No need to lie about the old rulesets for page after page to people who know they work and have enjoyed them for decades.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

you're clearly not smart enough to think outside boxes.

You need a box to think outside of it little buddy .

 

[Shitty Kitty]

I admire your tenacity, sheep, but at some point you have to realize the corollary to "winners never quit and quitters never win" is "if you never win and never quit, you're a fucking retard"

I can't even .

Most retarded sentence of the thread.

I like how these two sentences prompted the above flurry of defensive text walls.

It doesn’t matter how many times you prove the opposite to anti-alignment spergs, they keep strawmaning the alignment system as either a straight jacket or a funnel designed to turn everyone into either Dudley Do-Right or some mustachioed caricature of a villain.

Both strawmen are provably false per the source material and actual D&D games and campaigns like PST, but they just keep posting them insistently, hoping the sheer volume of text they spew will convince everyone that alignments are bad.

I’m just not sure why they try so hard, given that WotC already seem to be streamlining alignments out of existence and care more about Diversity, with orcs that are just like humans only with superpowers, than battles of good verses evil.

You’re already getting the watered down D&D you want so badly. No need to lie about the old rulesets for page after page to people who know they work and have enjoyed them for decades.

The only thing you've proven is that you're an idiot with no excuse for being an idiot.

And for whatever other faults I would ascribe to D&D5, they've made a positive development step by discarding alignment. Cry about it so I can laugh at you. Groan about the good old days of an edition written by a person who hated the genre and commiserate over the loss of something that added zero value to any game it's ever been shoehorned into.

 

[Daemongar]

I like alignment. Some games do a crappy implementation. Some games do good implementations.

Removing alignment, like removing: encumbrance, selling loot, random encounters, turn based combat, rest to get back hps, spell memorization, skills and skill points, and all the mechanics of D&D - this just keeps moving RPGs towards "awesome buttons" like Skyrim and Diablo III. While there is room for Skyrim and Diablo III at the table, quit trying to make every RPG mirror these shit sandwiches. Thank you.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

Removing alignment, like removing: encumbrance, selling loot, random encounters, turn based combat, rest to get back hps, spell memorization, skills and skill points, and all the mechanics of D&D

Encumbrance: can be extrapolated easily from a Strength score and creature type/size, turned into a range of numbers, and worked around via bags of holding, pack animals/cohorts and followers and generally not being a ridiculous packrat. Houserules exist to polish rougher edges like the weight of a longsword (actually half that of a D&D longsword - the real longsword is neither a one-handed weapon proper nor does it weigh 4 lbs.)
Selling loot: can be handled well with Appraisal, an in-game economy designed by someone with the faintest grasp of how that kind of thing even works in the first place, and can be worked around mechanically by using items for things besides immediate cash-out.
Random encounters: as long as they make sense in the setting and don't derail the story, I don't care and have never cared that much about them, but if you're crutching on random encounter tables a lot as a DM or game designer you're clearly struggling to keep players engaged or you're just doing an off-the-cuff dungeon crawl.
Turn-based combat: Not even an issue for anything outside CRPGs. In CRPGs, I've yet to meet a RTwP or similar system I liked when laid over the foundation of something that came from TT. If it doesn't use a system that either came from TT or does not use conceits about time-economy borrowed from TTRPGs, all bets are off, and if you can make it work go for it.
Rest to recover: Assuming you're given the luxury, there's nothing wrong with this. The issue lies more with HP as a system for tracking character well-being, which is another can of worms.
Spell memorization: Vancian casting is imperfect but since it's not really the root source of the insane power-gaps between non-casters and casters, I neither mind it nor am I particularly attached to it.
Skills and skill points: This is not generally an issue, as the only skills I've seen that have potential to break/derail games are diplomacy-related, and that pales before some of the BS a wizard can pull. Standard fighters getting poor skill point development and short class skill lists is fairly dumb, though, but classes like the Warblade, certain Fighter variant ACFs and so on alleviate this. 3.x Paladins and certain gish-y classes like Hexblade probably have the worst issue with skill point growth, as they actually have access to a number of really pertinent skills and usually very few points to spend on them, though the Paladin suffers the worst due to extreme MAD and INT being one of the lowest-priority attributes for them for every other mechanic they possess, second only to DEX really.

 

[DraQ]

I admire your tenacity, sheep, but at some point you have to realize the corollary to "winners never quit and quitters never win" is "if you never win and never quit, you're a fucking retard"

I can't even .

Most retarded sentence of the thread.

Hit a nerve?

 

[Atlantico]

Hit a nerve?

One of the problems with people who have severe autism, like yourself, is that you can't discern human reactions, so it is understandable that you'd need to ask or otherwise engage in blind guesswork about what happened.

It is in fact p. evident to normally functioning people, that it definitely did not hit a nerve, since it didn't even promote a reaction.

Rather, it provoked a loss of words and a sincere declaration of disbelief. At which point the poster just gave up trying to make sense of the retarded sentence.

Sarathiour merely made an astute observation.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

Hit a nerve?

One of the problems with people who have severe autism, like yourself, is that you can't discern human reactions, so it is understandable that you'd need to ask or otherwise engage in blind guesswork about what happened.

It is in fact p. evident to normally functioning people, that it definitely did not hit a nerve, since it didn't even promote a reaction.

Rather, it provoked a loss of words and a sincere declaration of disbelief. At which point the poster just gave up trying to make sense of the retarded sentence.

Sarathiour merely made an astute observation.

Lot of words to say "I'M NOT MAD. YOU'RE MAD", isn't it?

 

[Atlantico]

Lot of words to say "I'M NOT MAD. YOU'RE MAD", isn't it?

It would be, if that was what I was saying. But it wasn't, so it isn't.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

Lot of words to say "I'M NOT MAD. YOU'RE MAD", isn't it?

It would be, if that was what I was saying. But it wasn't, so it isn't.

Gonna roll Sense Motive on that.

 

[Daemongar]

actually half that of a D&D longsword - the real longsword is neither a one-handed weapon proper nor does it weigh 4 lbs.

As much as I'd like to agree with you, I just don't know you well enough to take your side over Gary Gygax.

 

[Gastrick]

I explained pretty succinctly why alignment is stupid, pointless, unhelpful and easily omitted/replaced by more robust systems that lead to better roleplaying and reactivity.

What posts were those, at over 600 replies I'm not sure where to look. I'm going to read them with an impartial state of mind.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Violation of player agency is verboten

It's not, though.
It's as much of a "violation of player agency" as failing a skill check because your character isn't proficient at it.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Violation of player agency is verboten

It's not, though.
It's as much of a "violation of player agency" as failing a skill check because your character isn't proficient at it.

Pretty much. After all, it is such a quiet thing to fall...~

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Yeah. If you’ve ever seen someone who isn’t comfortable with lying stumble over themselves in a lie. It’s not a lack of skill, it’s a lack of will to do a thing. You’re not willing to do it so you don’t, or at best you do it poorly.

Makes sense, especially since rusty_shackleford said it was for things in extreme opposition to your alignment.

That said, I personally wouldn’t do it, if it’s not in the rules.

Spoiler

Lawful +1

 

[Sarathiour]

Since we are hitting peak autism level, i guess i have to do a long winded explanation for two sentences. So here we go.

I admire your tenacity, sheep, but at some point you have to realize the corollary to "winners never quit and quitters never win" is "if you never win and never quit, you're a fucking retard"

I can't even .

This is indeed disbelief. I gave up arguing on alignment on this thread, there is no debate possible with someone who try (and mostly fail) to twist every sentence to his advantage, so i just kept minimum presence to point blatantly wrong thing. You disagree with me, that's fine, i don't really care at this point.

Most retarded sentence of the thread.

Disregarding the whole "debate" around alignment, your statement make no sense whatsoever.
Firstly, corollary mean a precise thing in logic and mathematics. You probably want to use for stylistic effect, that does not change the fact that logically speaking, statement B is in no way corollary to statement A.
Moreover, the saying "winner never quit" which is facebook level-tier of motivational speech, is just that, a "deep" motivational quote. The fact that you are using such thing as basis for argumentation is at best clownish.
Lastly, do you realize how stupid you sound ? You determine arbitrary the win condition and then proceed to rule your conclusion. According to this premise, you could advocate for flat-earth theory and still conclude about the other guy being retarded.
In science, we call it empirical falsification; could you at least understand that if you want to play a game, there need to be rule to declare when you win and when you lost ?

To try to illustrate your position, you are want to play a card game match where you are starting with this

"Well now, we can begin to play, retard "

Jesus.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

Violation of player agency is verboten

It's not, though.
It's as much of a "violation of player agency" as failing a skill check because your character isn't proficient at it.

Except "do something seemingly out of character" isn't a skill, and rolling Will to do that implies some external factor forcing the character's hand. I'd rather take the player to OOC and ask him what the character's rationale could possibly be here, because if I were the DM I'd be confused as fuck unless there was some hint in the character's backstory or previous actions. I'd still let him go through with it, and model appropriate (and likely severe) consequences in-world, because it's better to let players learn from mistakes than refuse to let them make mistakes at all. I'm not going to assume metagaming or other chicanery from one apparent break in character, but no free lunches.