A eulogy for Alignment in CRPGs

[Goose]

Hey Lord_Potato, you appear to be Chaotic Good.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

Hey Lord_Potato, you appear to be Chaotic Good.

If you're gonna shittalk someone at least tag them in, CE.

 

[Tigranes]

I wasn't aware there was a 'crusade' against alignment, especially since in the context of CRPGs, they never actually did much - they were just a holdover from D&D that people couldn't do a whole lot with.

I agree that it was always supposed to be a rough and tumble abstraction that subsequently enables you to flesh things out. Nerd Treatises about what alignment is what exactly has always been a pointless exercise. By the same token, though, I'm not really sure we've lost that much from CRPGs by phasing them out.

The shift towards faction reputations, with a lot of the best efforts led by Early Obsidian, was very much the right move. After that we've stagnated again, and faction systems have become a gimmicky, over-quantified caricature. AOD/AP shows how to innovate again, but what is actually needed is to match the writing to the categories, rather than better categories alone.

 

[Desiderius]

For some time now, we've seen a steady crusade against Alignment and its restrictions in D&D (including on this very Codex, to our collective shame), which has culminated with WotC effectively deprecating the mechanic for all practical purposes in 5E, a significant loss for the system and especially in videogames, as BG3 will soon demonstrate. As a preliminary caveat, I'm concerned with dynamic/reactive Alignment here, not the hard prescriptive variant.

As a feature, Alignment added something rather special to the D&D ruleset in that it provided a tangible bridge between the narrative and mechanical aspects of a character's progression. It offered a framework that validated a PC's agency at the plot level with material repercussions, be they beneficial or undesirable, and narrowed the over-flogged "ludo-narrative gap" just a bit. Any reasonable person understands that boundaries are as important to a game as its affordances, and that "you can do anything" gets really old really fast. Reactive Alignment provided an expanded framework for a PC to have a character arc in, where supernatural creatures might be more predisposed towards characters of a like-minded persuasion, evil could be smitten, powerful artefacts might reject an unqualified wielder, holy men could fall and villains could find redemption - and all of these things weren't just waffle, they had hard, numerical consequences that went onto your character sheet.

Now, when you're playing around the table with this advanced, radiant AI called a DM (well, maybe not so advanced sometimes), there is of course room to have your experience contextualised ad hoc. Indeed, the DM could even just choose to bring Alignment back (I did), or they could simply make on-the-spot rulings as to whether your character is worthy of wielding Carsomyr or not. Basically, Decline may be mitigated by DM fiat.

But when it comes to videogames, there is no such salvation - the DM is hardcoded, and he's not taking your questions. And without the benefit of a systemic Alignment framework to (rudimentarilly) assess your moral quandries and dish out your "just" rewards, you're left with the pressing ennui of endless possibility, where every door is just as good as the rest, and the path to choose is the one which gives you one extra goblin's worth of XP. Perhaps I'm being overly dramatic, but it's undeniable that there will be less character feedback to your decisions. Ethical choices and consequences still exist, obviously, non-D&D games have them, but you're restricted to setpieces which need development resources to script and, of late, voice and animate - i.e. they cost money.

So shall we get concrete? The Paladin's the blatant choice to pick on. Once the jackbooted thug of a given church, a zealot granted divine power in service to his order, he had to comply with a strict code abstractly describing him as "Lawful Good" to exercise his abilities. The definition of Lawful Good didn't really matter so much, contrary to all the hand-wringing, what counted was that it was a burden to bear in play and that the class had a fictional background to anchor it in the world. And now? What is the Paladin now, other than a bloke bestowed Superman powers merely by virtue of "really, really believing in something, man!" As if Chaotic Neutral entropy is even something to value in the first place. Fuck off.

And we're left with a question - why? Why did Alignment have to be tossed to the wayside? Well, it's partly because hordes of Critical Role fans just couldn't put up with a DM's ruling: "But why is my Paladin getting Chaotic points for lying to the bad guys?! What do you mean I can't roll a Lawful Good soul-selling Warlock?!" And it's also because of a streaming parade of keyboard philosophers, plenty on this very forum, constantly decrying that a tic-tac-toe table of arbitrary moral references can't accurately describe the complexity of human psychology... The very same people who'll harp on about TB over RTwP will turn around, suddenly forget what the word "abstraction" means, and wail over how four superficial cardinal points on the Alignment chart aren't realistic. Bravo! It was never supposed to be, just how the Attack and Damage Rolls were never supposed to comprehensively model a warhammer slamming a breastplate (paging Dr. Sawyer, Dr. Sawyer to Penetration stat). They were merely meant as accessible abstractions for play, but someone's always gotta overthink shit.

And just like that, poof! It's gone. Right down that screaming dark asshole of Decline you call "personal creativity." Enjoy your vacuous power fantasy where your Chaotic Neutral half-Dragonborn-half-Goblin-half-Elf Paladin of Tyr / Shadow Thief multiclass wearing Human Flesh +5 will simulatenously be grand master of all seventeen-and-a-quarter Skyrim guilds.

Because enough evil minds twisted Paladins into jackbooted thugs in their imagination that values were flipped and most lost their bearings.

There is no meaning apart from the true ground of all meaning. Bend the knee.

 

[Ismaul]

AFAIK, opposition to Alignment on the Codex was about what you call the "prescriptive" variant (and I agree with that). You don't want alignment to be a straightjacket; it's just indicative of your average tendencies, not something all your actions must conform to.

I don't recall any strong opposition to the Alignment system as I just described. If there was any, it was more about replacing it with another morality system that fit more with the game being run, or that was more granular. Maybe some where against the bookkeeping a morality system might bring (if you're anal about it), especially for PCs, and prefered to handwave it on the go.

Eh, I'm not going to start scouring the forums for examples, but my impression's been that Alignment as a mechanic catches flak quite regularly, to the point where some are glad to see the back of it altogether even if it's not replaced with a "better" implementation. And the issue is that usually any discussion on Alignment devolves into debating the variables of the implementation rather than the core concept. Such as this thread, which is already flirting with discussing individual alignment definitions, rather than the features of the general abstraction.

When I was running my tabletop campaign I reworked those cardinal points into what I thought would be largely workable for my group, with some indulgence, but I purposefully didn't bring it up in here because it would obfuscate the point - and that's that the Alignment mechanic is a valuable asset to CRPGs especially, even as we're all bound to disagree with particular interpretations.

Well, alignment, as a mechanic, rather than as a guideline to roleplay and an abstract representation of a character's overall morality, has some problems.

Like Serious_Business says, it works for a simple setting, with a simple, manichean morality. In many cases that's fine and plenty. But as soon as you deal with characters that have greater depth, with shades of grey morality where who and what is evil depends on the value system of the beholder, then the alignment system as a mechanic encounters some issues. "Neutral" just isn't sufficient for that.

It is pertinent to look at what alignment is as a mechanic. As a guideline and abstract representation of action tendencies, it really stays out of the way. As a mechanic, it intervenes only in a handful of places, but when it does, consequences are... complicated. First, Clerics and what spells they have. Seems simple, you get to choose your spells and deity, and you could even have a Cleric of an Evil deity that isn't himself evil. That's easy. That is, until for story reasons a Clerics changes deity, or changes alignment in such a way that his deity removes his power. That's a harsh consequence, and there isn't any way to deal with it in the rules. So alignment there seems to have interesting character development opportunities, but instead leads to nowhere mechanically. So it only works if the character remains mostly the same in regards to his faith. Alignment works best as long as it remains static, rather than dynamic.

Second, you've got Paladins. Gotta be lawful good, or lose all your powers. That's the mechanic. It's a fucking harsh mechanic, and nothing tells you what is sufficient for such a fall. Sure, it's up to the GM and depends on the story, but most GMs aren't good or wise. But should it really be up to the GM where the player takes his character RP-wise? That will surely lead to heated debates.

It's a great idea, the unwavering faith of the Paladin, and his potential fall. But how does it play? Either it does nothing if your alignment remains static (likely the original intended goal), or you lose all your spells and abilities! Great. But what you'd expect for a Paladin that lost his fervor, is him becoming a really good Fighter instead, or falling to the other side as a Blackguard/Death Knight or whatever. 3E does the Blackguard as a Prestige class with Base attack bonus requirements, so if the story takes you there before you meet the requirements, what happens? It really seems like alignment wasn't intended as a mechanic there, but was meant to stay the same, the alignment requirement just a guideline for roleplay, and then 3E tried to take the possibility of the fall into account half-assedly. And I haven't talked about the ambiguities of alignment, such as: is it lawful good or evil to smite all innocent disbelievers? To really apply alignment there as a mechanic, it seems you should be able to categorize all actions under a specific alignment. But what is the criterion? Is it intent, consequences, or something else? How do you weigh them? You'd need everyone at the table to agree on this...

Third, you've got alignment spells. Detect Evil is a good one. Good idea / trope, but what about a campaign with more subtelty? As a mechanic it kills an investigative campaign flat out. "Find the infiltrated servant of evil at the court." "Ok let me do this lvl 1 spell." Sure you can play with expectations, and have the servant not be evil but coerced or some such thing, but that works once and then what? If you play a campaign where evil depends on the adopted value system, this spell doesn't work as is. Adversaries are more compelling IMO when they have good reasons to do what your side perceives as bad. "Detect Taint" might be better, a taint might be there on good people for some reason, bad people could hide theirs etc. The mechanic breaks down when things are no longer simple, same goes for many other alignment-based spells.

I could go on. But really alignment as a mechanic seems to be intended as a static affair during play, and work best in a manichean world, where everyone at the table and maybe even in-game agrees on what is evil and what is good. And that's fine. But once you're off that train, the mechanic as written becomes too rigid. That is not to say that an alignment mechanic shouldn't exist, or isn't beneficial. But as is it can't do everything, it doesn't work for every game without an overhaul (and maybe that's fine too).


EDIT: I realize I'm talking about alignment from the point of view of PnP, and the thread is about cRPGs. It might be a bit less problematic in a cRPG since the way the world works is set, and opportunities for dynamic alignement changes aren't really present / designed for.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

Detect Evil is basically inviting one of the more egregious forms of Lawful Stupid. I dislike it as a spell/ability. In 3.5 there are ACFs that replace it with the ability to discern lies, which is way more apropos for a LG Paladin in the vein of "justiciar" or "inquisitor".

 

[Goose]

Ah yes. "Detect Taint" The favoured spell of all Chaotic Good Gnomes that inhabit this website.

 

[Desiderius]

Evil doesn’t depend on the value system of the beholder. That’s the whole point.

 

[Ismaul]

replace it with the ability to discern lies

That's better, but still makes it so that the players can't be deceived. That is, unless you have spells that counter Discern lies, but then if you're going to invalidate a class' central feature (or another's spell), that's a bit too much deception. For this, I might just make the ability/spell give something like a +5 Insight vs Lies. No flat out certainty.

 

[Desiderius]

The root of the whole problem is Gygax omitting the ontological pole so we’ve got nihilists running around in here mixed up with those who have normal testosterone levels.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

replace it with the ability to discern lies

That's better, but still makes it so that the players can't be deceived. That is, unless you have spells that counter Discern lies, but then if you're going to invalidate a class' central feature (or another's spell), that's a bit too much deception. For this, I might just make the ability/spell give something like a +5 Insight vs Lies. No flat out certainty.

That's actually a good solution, yeah. A scaling insight bonus to Sense Motive or equivalent - flavor it as like having your god or your god's divine auxiliaries sort of watching your quarry over your shoulder and helping you by pointing out a tell in their behavior.

 

[deuxhero]

Alignment has been dying since at least when Eberron was introduced, making it so Divine Casters could be any alignment or breed of heretic while still getting spells, to reinforce that most divine entities can't be proven (and the one that can has an overlord in it that will happily people), if not Ravenloft (which killed spells that made alignment knowable because it ruined the setting). 5E's core in 2012 had no mechanical impact for alignment. It's nonsense to think something that began in 2015 was responsible for its death.

Alignment is crutches for weak players to allow some consistency to their characters roleplay.
But it's a double edged sword, which creates stupid narrative sometimes.

And the idea behind it has been done better by more modern RPGs by just requiring a personality and motivation and giving you hero/action points when roleplaying consistently is to your detriment or your backstory causes problems for you.

 

[Poseidon00]

Ravenloft didn't kill alignment, if anything it made it more impactful. Eberron was bad though, one of the only settings I have never had the slightest of interest in, and can't like DDO for reason of using it either.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

Ravenloft didn't kill alignment, if anything it made it more impactful. Eberron was bad though, one of the only settings I have never had the slightest of interest in, and can't like DDO for reason of using it either.

There are things about Eberron I like. The Warforged alone are interesting. Shifters and changelings are both potentially interesting, though changelings in particular invite all kinds of crazy bullshit. The Kalashtar are remarkably uninteresting given what they are. I like that Drow are just xenophobic asshats now instead of some sick fuck's catchall fetish dump. A lot of squandered opportunity, though.

 

[oldmanpaco]

What's the best alignment and why is it Neutral Evil?

This is why:

 

[Shitty Kitty]

That is a whole lot of Lee van Cleef.

Don't think Blondie was NE personally, maybe the kind of TN that just does not give a fuck at the end of the day, or a CN that isn't a fucking embarrassing retard.

Tuco as CE is spot on.

 

[oldmanpaco]

That is a whole lot of Lee van Cleef.

Don't think Blondie was NE personally, maybe the kind of TN that just does not give a fuck at the end of the day, or a CN that isn't a fucking embarrassing retard.

Tuco as CE is spot on.

Well that's van Cleef from all three movies. I actually think Tuco is more CNl than the CN guy. He at least shows remorse when he visits his brother.

 

[Desiderius]

What's the best alignment and why is it Neutral Evil?

This is why:

That’s not NE lol.

That’s my avatar on Owlcat forum!

 

[oldmanpaco]

What's the best alignment and why is it Neutral Evil?

This is why:

That’s not NE lol.

That’s my avatar on Owlcat forum!

We all got a dark side.

edit: Also where do you find the time to post there with the 1000's of hours into PF:K and your constant vigilance in the threads here?

 

[Funposter]

Also where do you find the time to post there with the 1000's of hours into PF:K and your constant vigilance in the threads here?

steam overlay

 

[Desiderius]

What's the best alignment and why is it Neutral Evil?

This is why:

That’s not NE lol.

That’s my avatar on Owlcat forum!

We all got a dark side.

edit: Also where do you find the time to post there with the 1000's of hours into PF:K and your constant vigilance in the threads here?

Don’t sleep as much as I should. Texting while watching my boys. Only there for Alpha testing.

Eastwood’s never dark, but sometimes he’s clear.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Eastwood’s never dark, but sometimes he’s clear.

Yeah I know. Probably TN or NG but the NE chart fit my narrative.

 

[deuxhero]

Ravenloft didn't kill alignment, if anything it made it more impactful. Eberron was bad though, one of the only settings I have never had the slightest of interest in, and can't like DDO for reason of using it either.

There are things about Eberron I like. The Warforged alone are interesting. Shifters and changelings are both potentially interesting, though changelings in particular invite all kinds of crazy bullshit. The Kalashtar are remarkably uninteresting given what they are. I like that Drow are just xenophobic asshats now instead of some sick fuck's catchall fetish dump. A lot of squandered opportunity, though.

What's squandered? Not sure how changelings invite crazy bullshit when magical disguises have always been low level spells.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

That is a whole lot of Lee van Cleef.

Yes.

Post more.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

Ravenloft didn't kill alignment, if anything it made it more impactful. Eberron was bad though, one of the only settings I have never had the slightest of interest in, and can't like DDO for reason of using it either.

There are things about Eberron I like. The Warforged alone are interesting. Shifters and changelings are both potentially interesting, though changelings in particular invite all kinds of crazy bullshit. The Kalashtar are remarkably uninteresting given what they are. I like that Drow are just xenophobic asshats now instead of some sick fuck's catchall fetish dump. A lot of squandered opportunity, though.

What's squandered? Not sure how changelings invite crazy bullshit when magical disguises have always been low level spells.

Mostly to do with the lore and how some changelings make a statement about their lives or something by never assuming anyone else's identity and just staying these weird ghost-faced motherfuckers because, uh, NPC. Also, trannies. Regarding what's squandered - I can't help but feel that the setting would be better served outside of the scope of anything to do with D&D. An Eberron campaign, based on established lore, could be spun into some crazy fun shit. I've never really seen anything that just blew me away as far as what people have bothered to do with it, I guess. Might be more of an issue with people's imaginations than anything else.

EDIT: Also, the whole idea of the Reforged drives me batty. It's an interesting concept - it basically apes the endgame of a Promethean from WoD, but turns it into an unsatisfying PrC that seems to be some kind of oblique statement about how being a 'real boy' is actually shit.