A eulogy for Alignment in CRPGs

[Sarathiour]

Fucked up quote

 

[DraQ]

Fucked up quote

FUUUUUUUCK. Retarded forum ate half of my post.

 

[DraQ]

and forum software decided to go all

on my post.
Reconstruction of missing part below:

Lambchop19

Stop being butthurt and answer the question asked.

I answered it the first time.

I don't think you have. If so, sorry, but try not drowning it out with strawmen and butthurt noises.

You provided no alternative because what you want requires an alignment system.

How so?

Reputation alone doesn’t suffice.

That's why I also mentioned an ethos system.

You basically end up with what you hated in Baldur’s Gate where evil party members hate you for having a good reputation, even if it serves their best interests.

Not only could a paladin join the assassin’s guild if he’s not widely known enough as a hero, but an assassin couldn’t, if he maintained too high a reputation.

Nope.

For starters reputation is always with someone and for something.
You don't have a single reputation score. You have a reputation with each relevant faction or individual and they track whatever they are interested in according to their abilities.

Assassins and other illicit organizations tend to be well informed. Those that aren't tend to go out of business - abruptly and bloodily.
They may be better informed of stuff you thought you've done in private than general public or authorities (and might employ more lax code of conduct when investigating).

Guilds in general might also want a specific skillset, assassin guild certainly will.

If you are a member of an illicit guild trading in murder, you're going to be wary of anyone trying to join who has no relevant skills (they specialize in honourable frontal combat, and heavy, conspicuous armour + heavy conspicuous weapons that are not conductive to stealthy murder), and reputation of being a selfless goody two shoes who actually doesn't seem to have ever murdered anyone. The obvious explanation is going to be that this person is seeking to inflitrate your hideout (thankfully ineptly) and once inside this person is going to cut you murderers all down. Letting them in is bad business sense and not conductive to survival.

Similarly, assassin guild is not going to be interested in character's general reputation with public or law. Or if they are, they might even require it to be relatively spotless to avoid new recruit's messy MO being an obvious liability.

What assassin guild will be interested in is whether you're able and willing to just murder someone in cold blood:

• Combined with their better than usual information network this means that they should be able to connect you with some of your murders (if you committed any) even if authorities didn't. Murder is actually how you are given opportunity to join the assassin guild in the last two of your favourite walking sims.
  
• Alternatively, you can be given a test task while only having very limited contact with the guild.

The guild may also be interested in specific skillset, but that's not obligatory.
So no, you don't need to be habitually kicking puppies to join the assassins, merely demonstrate ability and willingness to murder someone when told to and get away with this without attracting trouble - in other words to get the job done.
Having good reputation with law, public, nobles and merchants that might be possible targets, etc. is going to be a plus.

Seems logical.

There is generally no good reason to specifically seek bad reputation, ever.
It's a liability, although one you may burden yourself with as a result of character building choices or choices made during the game.

It also leads to the exact kind of evil/good cookie cutter characters you mistakenly claim the alignment system leads to. Your Paladin must always have a high reputation at all costs, your assassin must always be hated by all. No nuance like a paladin exiled or accused unjustly, or an assassin who maintains a perfect reputation in order to hide his illicit activities.

You are arguing for the kind of broken system you claim to hate.

Nope again.
Reputation with law or general public may not necessarily match your actual deeds and will be distinct from your reputation with whatever holds you true to your ethos.
Exiled paladin remains a viable choice and may even offer interesting roleplaying opportunities supported by mechanics.
For example if you've been falsely accused of murder, then after acquiring some assassin-y skills (despite them not being in-line with your build) you might try to join an assassin guild, destroy it from inside, then use whatever evidence you've gained to clear your name (for example you have uncovered plot to assassinate the king and eliminated the ones to do the deed - that should be worth something).

Well reputed assassin I have covered above.

The point doesn't involve anything systemic, so it's irrelevant for alignment as system.

It classifies Anomen based on the alignment system. How is it supposed to be more systemic than that?

By doing it based on a system rather than quest trigger or doing something more with this classification. Preferably both.
As it is the quest would play out the same without any alignment system.

Are you saying spells or weapons specifically affecting chaotic neutral beings won’t recognize that he’s chaotic neutral now?

I have explained already why alignment targeting mechanics is generally shit and how to replace it with something more interesting (ethos based weapons and powers, mind and aura reading spells, more specific protections and offensive effects).

Or are you complaining that it didn’t work by him being given a specific number of “dark side points” visible to you (which isn’t part of D&D or the alignment system)?

Are you doing that thing of yours again where you assume that someone is talking about something you really want to ridicule whenever you don't know what they are talking about?

I'd prefer devs try and fail doing something they might succeed at.
That's the distinction between "hard" and "folly".

You’re saying a relatively simple system is impossible to do well. That’s the only folly I see here.

The reason it hasn’t been done well, as I said, is because devs have either tried too much or too little reactivity. Assuming that means it will never be done well is illogical. Clearly a balance can be achieved if two extremes can.

That does not follow.

There are many examples where it doesn't work like that.
For example look up what happens when you're trying to use linear regression/classifier on a dataset that is not linear/linearly separable. You don't get a good outcome somewhere between two bad extremes. You simply get different mixes of bad.

Or, for a more down to earth example, assume you need to police some population effectively and justly.
One extreme is your policing force doing nothing, the other is it beating everyone all the time. In between it just beats random citizens randomly with varying frequency - one of those frequencies must be the point where the policing will be just and effective, right?
Well, wrong.
Because randomly beating people is not a valid solution here. Neither is alignment.

Planescape has alignments built into the cosmology. They are effectively physical places.
You can't make use of Planescape setting without them no matter how shitty they are as a concept.
And yet, the best use of alignment in PS:T was its deconstruction.

Except it didn’t deconstruct them, it explained them.

Looks like deconstruction to me.

 

[Atlantico]

That's why I also mentioned an ethos system.

QED

 

[RNGsus]

Alignment's best suited for games where the players are thrust into a larger conflict.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

You keep repeating that but so far have failed to demonstrate it.

It's really simple:
"Alignment system allows me to do X which I couldn't do with any other system or without and which is actually worth doing (because of Y)."

You gave an example yourself when you talked about deities. It defines the character’s worldview. His fundamental beliefs. His ethos.

I’ve given numerous examples, both in the post you are replying to and in other posts.

You saying that I haven’t doesn’t make it so.

We were talking about reputation system. Faction reputation allows you to abstract away many gameworld details - such as NPCs actually talking with one another and moving across geographical distances.

Well, duh. As I said, it’s useful, but not necessary. The game can work without it. You can hack together workarounds.

But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Why is this such a hard analogy for you?

A car will run without seatbelts, but removing the seatbelts is a stupid thing to do.

It doesn't represent his argument if you didn't even get his argument.
Advocating code of conduct consisting of magic not being used rashly in order to prevent harm is very much LG thinking - "hey I have this rule that will make things better".
You are just assuming that everyone but you doesn't know WTF they are talking about, then pretending that you know what they were trying to say (and were obviously wrong about) and try fighting that construct you've made.
It's strawmanning, in a stupid way too.

Lol you talk about strawman arguments and you just changed his argument yourself. He said nothing about “advocating a code”. That would be actual Lawful Good behavior.

The LG wizard who considers having great power to be a great responsibility, and tries to impress upon others the importance of judicious use of magic as a tool with which to improve not only their own lives but the lives of others.

Basically advocate magic be used responsibly, or for the good of others. Which is neutral good, not lawful good.

Even you subconsciously realized how bad his example was and tried to fix it.

Actions are observable, beliefs aren't. In particular PC's beliefs in a cRPG are unobservable even if you have mechanics specifically for observing beliefs and that makes this mechanics an inherently failed one.

Which is why when you track player actions for long-term alignment shifts, you want to be very careful which actions you track and why. Changing his alignment every few dialog options is worse than not changing it at all.

He does? I mean apart from the way it is already related to the class in DnD - paladin must be LG

The example was talking about mages, not paladins. You’re getting desperate.

It also had nothing to do with class requirements. He was trying to show that alignments were unnecessary if the bio communicated their alignment in other words. He failed because he didn’t communicate their alignments in their bios. And again, this isn’t easily abstractable for use in a system. Be it a ruleset or a computer program, and it’s too subject to interpretation. For any game to function, rules must be clear and agreed upon.

Great, then fill in your motivation too/instead - GM might still use that, computer still won't care.
Same difference.

Lol, so you admit his bio doesn’t communicate motive.

Btw, if you asked him to fill it in, he’d probably do it wrong because he clearly doesn’t get the concept. That’s why the alignments are spelled out and not just “describe your character’s worldview/motives as relates to law/chaos and good/evil”.

I want it included because you can't let go of "MUH SYSTEM" even if it's completely pointless and even harmful - demonstrably so.
Although admittedly being able to add a description to your character sheet can be handy.

You never demonstrated any harm in the alignment system when used properly. At best, people don’t understand it at first. Which is fine if they can learn. I didn’t understand it at first. Now I do. Maybe someday you will too...

Unless the chaotic act is actually supposed to be lawful but the system - being alignment dumbfuckery - is not sophisticated enough to recognize that.

Then that would have nothing to do with the alignment system, but whomever attributed chaos to a lawful act.

Again, poor implementation of a system doesn’t mean the system is bad, it means the implementer is.

I don’t read your posts and conclude keyboards are useless just because you keep failing to write anything correct with one.

He might have because the system fails to understand the difference and communicate this. A problem an actual system, like ethos based, wouldn't have, being able to specify "you do this, this or this and you'll have to atone, this, this or that and you fall" at fucking chargen.
That's precisely one of the failings of alignment system.

What are you talking about? This is for the Paladin class. It has those requirements because that’s the fun of playing the class. Remove them and it ceases to be a paladin and becomes a fighter with magic spells. What’s next? Will you say monks that use martial arts are flawed somehow too? lol

And this is all spelled out like this for more detail, a better game And more concrete rules. That’s the point of the Paladin’s Handbook. To provide more detail on paladins. You could get away with just the description in the player’s handbook, but that’s not going to give you as rich an experience.

My character wants what I want them to want. Problem?

Nope.

Spoiler

+1 chaotic

Looks like sensible advice. With a good GM playing against your RL personality will make you uncomfortable, unless your RL "alignment" is "psychopathic".

You literally can’t into role playing. Playing someone other than yourself can be part of the fun.

Like I said, it’s not uncommon, but it just cements my opinion that you really just want Skyrim.

If you killed a bunch of villagers for lulz then you obviously weren't LG to begin with. That only exposes the impotence of alignment system - it doesn't do fuck about tracking motivation which is the one job it has.

Ugh. Again, it is not supposed to track YOUR worldview/motives. It’s supposed to track YOUR CHARACTER’S.

It’s not the system’s fault when the player lies about how he’s going to play the character at the start of the game. And further, the system can respond to it by changing the character’s alignment.

Ironically enough, there are mods for the walking simulator mentioned that actually implement an ethos based system (for example for religion).
Jelly much?

Look, you keep talking about ethos systems...your alignment is basically your ethos. Your fundamental beliefs.

Maybe link me to an example of what you’re talking about like this mod?

Rules only matter as much as they can be enforced.

Ok...

Spoiler

chaotic +1

If it cannot be enforced, it's void.
This applies to alignment, INT stat and so on.
Don't codify what you cannot enforce, especially in a cRPG - at least in TT GM can rocksfall a blatantly uncooperative player.

Uh huh. I guess it’s impossible to enforce then?

Spoiler

chaotic +1
evil +1

It's a valid argument. Talking about why and how alignment is broken is appropriate for an alignment-oriented thread. Going all defensive and wanting people to leave Britney alignment alone is acting butthurt.

I didn’t ask you to leave it alone. I asked you why you didn’t since you have other options.

Because it's a thread about alignments. Why don't you leave this thread if it hurts you emotionally and go play something with alignments?

Because it doesn’t hurt me emotionally and because alignments were phased out in modern games like BG3 thanks to guys like you who can’t understand them no matter how much explanation they read.

That's why I also mentioned an alignment ethos system.

FTFY

Nope.

For starters reputation is always with someone and for something.
You don't have a single reputation score. You have a reputation with each relevant faction or individual and they track whatever they are interested in according to their abilities.

So you want a complex reputation system and want an influence system on top of that. None of that would be affected either way by an alignment system, nor would it define character ethos.

Assassins and other illicit organizations tend to be well informed. Those that aren't tend to go out of business - abruptly and bloodily.
They may be better informed of stuff you thought you've done in private than general public or authorities (and might employ more lax code of conduct when investigating).

Yeah the Dark Brotherhood sees all.

This is what too much Elder Scrolls does to your brain, folks.

Sorry, but your entire example is silly on its face. You’re literally just copying the Dark Brotherhood.

Reputation with law or general public may not necessarily match your actual deeds and will be distinct from your ALIGNMENT.

FTFY

There is generally no good reason to specifically seek bad reputation, ever.

Millionaire rappers would disagree and you just gave an example of a guild that you have to murder someone to get into...

By doing it based on a system rather than quest trigger or doing something more with this classification. Preferably both.
As it is the quest would play out the same without any alignment system.

Wrong. His character changes after this. The alignment system is a guide for this change and helps the system react to it. The ruleset as a whole can respond to this change. Spells and items will respond to his new alignment.

If it weren’t Baldur’s Gate, we might see more reactivity than this. In PnP you certainly could. It just depends on how much budget goes to writing more interactions and interjections for the character in a game.

And as to your reference to it not being a “system”, he’s an NPC. There’s no need for that even if such a system existed. However, you don’t know that they didn’t use a similar on-paper system writing the quest. A DM doesn’t need to tell you when you or an NPC receives a +/- to their alignment. Anomen’s fall came in stages. Agreeing to not let the law handle it, agreeing to kill the girl, finally seeing the law as useless when he got flunked out of knight school. I could very easily see a system being employed in his shift.

Pathfinder or any other game that gives you +/- alignment bumps are a system and similar can be used by DMs, but as I said, they go too far. You don’t need to do it in every dialog option or conversation.

I have explained already why alignment targeting mechanics is generally shit and how to replace it with something more interesting (ethos based weapons and powers, mind and aura reading spells, more specific protections and offensive effects).

The more you describe it the more it sounds like a rip-off of alignments. Know alignment, detect alignment, protection from evil...

Are you doing that thing of yours again where you assume that someone is talking about something you really want to ridicule whenever you don't know what they are talking about?

I literally asked you what you meant. You can just answer.

That does not follow.

There are many examples where it doesn't work like that.
For example look up what happens when you're trying to use linear regression/classifier on a dataset that is not linear/linearly separable. You don't get a good outcome somewhere between two bad extremes. You simply get different mixes of bad.

Or, for a more down to earth example, assume you need to police some population effectively and justly.
One extreme is your policing force doing nothing, the other is it beating everyone all the time. In between it just beats random citizens randomly with varying frequency - one of those frequencies must be the point where the policing will be just and effective, right?
Well, wrong.
Because randomly beating people is not a valid solution here. Neither is alignment.

You set a false metric in your example. No police force beats everyone, does nothing or beats random people. That’s stupid and...wait for it...a strawman. I’m not advocating alignment modifiers be employed randomly.

A better example would be a meal that’s too hot or too cold can’t be heated to a temperature that’s just right...

Oh wait it can. Guess I’m right again lol. What a shock.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

My character wants what I want them to want. Problem?

If it is out of character for your character, yes, problem.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

Seeing this discussion has utterly convinced me that you have to be a well-functioning individual with a proper upbringing to understand the alignment system. You can't really explain it to disfunctional individuals - it's like trying to force a dog to read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

 

[DraQ]

My character wants what I want them to want. Problem?

If it is out of character for your character, yes, problem.

Is this a problem you can solve with a dumb system?

hint

No.

Spoiler

It takes human level intelligence to evaluate character's behaviour against character's concept.
We don't have that in cRPG making system useless and we do have that in TT making it redundant.

 

[Atlantico]

Is this a problem you can solve with a dumb system?

Everything is limited in a "dumb" system, shithead. What problem is solved by the STR attribute with a dumb system? None, because it takes human level intelligence to evaluate a character's ability with regard to STR and what he wants to do.

We don't have that in cRPG making system (sic) useless and we do have that in TT making it redundant.

Any attribute or ability offered in cRPGs is limited by the presets given by the developer. If alignement is "useless" then everything is useless in cRPGs, because that's how your dumbass argument is presented.

Not that it can be presented in any way that makes sense, oh my good lord you are a a midwit. I would bitchslap you and your autistic faggoty ass to next tuesday if I ever met you.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

My character wants what I want them to want. Problem?

If it is out of character for your character, yes, problem.

Is this a problem you can solve with a dumb system?

hint

No.

Spoiler

It takes human level intelligence to evaluate character's behaviour against character's concept.
We don't have that in cRPG making system useless and we do have that in TT making it redundant.

You should just join a theater improv group and be done with it.

 

[Atlantico]

You should just join a theater improv group and be done with it.

Seems like a good advice, he could explore his homosexuality while he's there. Win-win situation!

 

[DraQ]

You keep repeating that but so far have failed to demonstrate it.

It's really simple:
"Alignment system allows me to do X which I couldn't do with any other system or without and which is actually worth doing (because of Y)."

You gave an example yourself when you talked about deities. It defines the character’s worldview. His fundamental beliefs. His ethos.

And it does jack shit with that.
As I said.

We were talking about reputation system. Faction reputation allows you to abstract away many gameworld details - such as NPCs actually talking with one another and moving across geographical distances.

Well, duh. As I said, it’s useful, but not necessary. The game can work without it. You can hack together workarounds.

You can always hack together workarounds. Technically you don't really need any specific mechanics - in principle you could have set up a simulation at atomic level as the only mechanics and have everything flow from there (of course it's not remotely feasible, and a bit of an overkill for most practical applications, but in principle it should work).

The thing is that faction reputation is a kind of workaround that minimizes the amount of work needed to simulate factions as a whole reacting to PC's actions.

But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Why is this such a hard analogy for you?

Because it's a bad analogy. Alignment doesn't give you anything over whatever you already have. You don't get to say "I am chaotic good so I do chaotic good things" or "I am lawful evil, so I do evil, but lawfully". You need to spell it out through the gameplay anyway, for example "I protect the weak from oppressors and make corrupt assholes fear the night", or "I am greedy bastard who always follows the contracts to the letter but doesn't care whose head he will bash in as long as there is money in it" at which point alignment doesn't have anything to add.

A car will run without seatbelts, but removing the seatbelts is a stupid thing to do.

In such case alignment is a seatbelt made of tension wire. You can keep it unplugged and not get any benefit, or fasten it and face extra injuries.

Or you can throw the piece of shit away as the first step and hopefully mount a proper seat belt as a follow up. Yep, a pretty good analogy overall.

Lol you talk about strawman arguments and you just changed his argument yourself.

Nothing easier than verifying that:
Hey, Shitty Kitty , have I strawmanned your argument?

To me it looks like Shitty's wizard advocates moderation in use of magic and abstaining from using it needlessly (a common trope in fantasy) which looks like proposing rules that are supposed to make things better.
If that's NG, is summoning a sweetroll (let's see what happens now) magically an evil act?

Actions are observable, beliefs aren't. In particular PC's beliefs in a cRPG are unobservable even if you have mechanics specifically for observing beliefs and that makes this mechanics an inherently failed one.

Which is why when you track player actions for long-term alignment shifts, you want to be very careful which actions you track and why. Changing his alignment every few dialog options is worse than not changing it at all.

This isn't why, this is unrelated.

He does? I mean apart from the way it is already related to the class in DnD - paladin must be LG

The example was talking about mages, not paladins. You’re getting desperate.

He was talking about a mage, paladin and a monk as three examples of his LG characters to show how alignment doesn't give you anything.
Are you illiterate or just hard of thinking?

It also had nothing to do with class requirements.

It does if the class has alignment requirements - like 2 out of 3 of his examples. Of course it's not related to the actual point being made but I fully expected you to go "hurrr but alignment is required because you have a paladin and a monk there! durr" the moment I'd fail to acknowledge that.

I wonder why?

He was trying to show that alignments were unnecessary if the bio communicated their alignment in other words. He failed because he didn’t communicate their alignments in their bios.

Maybe you just failed your comprehension check?

And again, this isn’t easily abstractable for use in a system.

Neither is alignment, both are equally void to a computer program or a ruleset.

For any game to function, rules must be clear and agreed upon.

And alignment is anything but.

Great, then fill in your motivation too/instead - GM might still use that, computer still won't care.
Same difference.

Lol, so you admit his bio doesn’t communicate motive.

Compassion, for example, sounds like a motive.

Btw, if you asked him to fill it in, he’d probably do it wrong because he clearly doesn’t get the concept.

It's just a textbox, it wouldn't care anyway.

That’s why the alignments are spelled out and not just “describe your character’s worldview/motives as relates to law/chaos and good/evil”.

You mean "by retards, for retards"? Might explain why so many people find them so attractive and REEEE furiously if anyone dares to criticize.

You never demonstrated any harm in the alignment system when used properly. At best, people don’t understand it at first. Which is fine if they can learn.

Please, not this shit again.
Anyone with greater than slightly subnormal IQ should be able to instinctively grasp the alignments even as a kid. And anyone with a normal one or better should quickly notice why it is lacking once they grow up enough to not only play-pretend boring cookie cutter archetypes.

• It leaks the information player, GM or even both shouldn't have access to.
• It damages tension and mystery.
• It prevents ambivalence
• It prevents interesting conflicts
• It obscures actual character building and motivation with conveniently braindead meta-score for players to focus on
  
• It wastes time with completely pointless misunderstandings if players and GM don't stick to obvious cookie cutter archetypes and worn cliches.
• It thus funnels players and GMs towards shitty cliches worthy of kindergarten play-pretend.

I didn’t understand it at first.

I'm refraining from a very obvious remark here.

Now I do.

Unbelievable.

Then that would have nothing to do with the alignment system, but whomever attributed chaos to a lawful act.

You have already provided an example of something like this in an expatriate kit.
The thing is that with how ill defined the alignment is, you get no guarantees that plugging this hole here doesn't open another one somewhere else.

Again, poor implementation of a system doesn’t mean the system is bad, it means the implementer is.

It is if the system is not possible to implement well.

I don’t read your posts and conclude keyboards are useless just because you keep failing to write anything correct with one.

Neither do yours lead me to a conclusion that brains are a complete waste of flesh.
Now, with this out of the way, can we proceed ad rem?

Spoiler

I wanted to say "heads" but you probably eat with yours.

He might have because the system fails to understand the difference and communicate this. A problem an actual system, like ethos based, wouldn't have, being able to specify "you do this, this or this and you'll have to atone, this, this or that and you fall" at fucking chargen.
That's precisely one of the failings of alignment system.

What are you talking about? This is for the Paladin class.

Yeah, so?

It has those requirements because that’s the fun of playing the class. Remove them and it ceases to be a paladin and becomes a fighter with magic spells. What’s next? Will you say monks that use martial arts are flawed somehow too? lol

Do you understand anything at all?
At this point I can't tell if you're willingly obtuse or geuninely illiterate (possibly retarded).
Either way you're babbling complete non-sequiturs.

I mentioned Expatriate as a kind of example that might end up failing to work as intended in a cRPG alignment system because it requires understanding - something a computer doesn't do - of the context of the behaviour.

And I also contrasted alignment with ethos which works much better due to being much better defined.

And this is all spelled out like this for more detail, a better game And more concrete rules.

Concrete rules... Concrete rules... Oh! You mean like ethos?

My character wants what I want them to want. Problem?

Nope.

Spoiler

+1 chaotic

Looks like sensible advice. With a good GM playing against your RL personality will make you uncomfortable, unless your RL "alignment" is "psychopathic".

You literally can’t into role playing. Playing someone other than yourself can be part of the fun.

You have to play them with your own mind that is creating their interpretation.
So in the end you are playing a distorted facet of yourself.
If you don't really get what would motivate certain character type, you can't meaningfully play them. At best you'll end up with a stupid cardboard caricature.

Like I said, it’s not uncommon, but it just cements my opinion that you really just want Skyrim.

Walking simulator mentions + 1.

If you killed a bunch of villagers for lulz then you obviously weren't LG to begin with. That only exposes the impotence of alignment system - it doesn't do fuck about tracking motivation which is the one job it has.

Ugh. Again, it is not supposed to track YOUR worldview/motives. It’s supposed to track YOUR CHARACTER’S.

And why is my character slaughtering a bunch of innocent villagers if they have "Lawful Good" in their character sheet?

It’s not the system’s fault when the player lies about how he’s going to play the character at the start of the game. And further, the system can respond to it by changing the character’s alignment.

It's system's fault that the player can.

Ironically enough, there are mods for the walking simulator mentioned that actually implement an ethos based system (for example for religion).
Jelly much?

Look, you keep talking about ethos systems...your alignment is basically your ethos. Your fundamental beliefs.

Maybe link me to an example of what you’re talking about like this mod?

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).

Rules only matter as much as they can be enforced.

Ok...

Spoiler

chaotic +1

If it cannot be enforced, it's void.
This applies to alignment, INT stat and so on.
Don't codify what you cannot enforce, especially in a cRPG - at least in TT GM can rocksfall a blatantly uncooperative player.

Uh huh. I guess it’s impossible to enforce then?

Spoiler

chaotic +1
evil +1

If an attribute system required player to politely refrain from rolling huge boulders with a strength score of 3, we would have rightfully decried it as useless.
Why the double standard?

I didn’t ask you to leave it alone. I asked you why you didn’t since you have other options.

Contradict yourself much?

Because it's a thread about alignments. Why don't you leave this thread if it hurts you emotionally and go play something with alignments?

Because it doesn’t hurt me emotionally and because alignments were phased out in modern games like BG3 thanks to guys like you who can’t understand them no matter how much explanation they read.

Ah, so you want a safe space?

Nope.

For starters reputation is always with someone and for something.
You don't have a single reputation score. You have a reputation with each relevant faction or individual and they track whatever they are interested in according to their abilities.

So you want a complex reputation system and want an influence system on top of that. None of that would be affected either way by an alignment system, nor would it define character ethos.

Yes, I want a system that tracks whatever needs to be tracked in order to make characters and forces/powers in the world react in an appropriate manner.
And no, I don't want a system not included in this game to influence anything due to it not exisiting.
Also, you make a mistake here speaking of character's ethos. It's only character's ethos as long as character subscribes to and then observes it. It might be a class' ethos or faction ethos, or religious ethos or even artifact's or particular magic practice's ethos. If a character subscribes to an ethos and then fails to observe it (and are observed doing that by the interested party - which might be "always" for gods or artifact they are holding) they face the consequences.

Assassins and other illicit organizations tend to be well informed. Those that aren't tend to go out of business - abruptly and bloodily.
They may be better informed of stuff you thought you've done in private than general public or authorities (and might employ more lax code of conduct when investigating).

Yeah the Dark Brotherhood sees all.

This is what too much Elder Scrolls does to your brain, folks.

Silly me, the proper way to recruit a murderer for hire is to put up an add in the town's square.

Sorry, but your entire example is silly on its face. You’re literally just copying the Dark Brotherhood.

That's not an argument.

And I have provided an alternative example.
You can provide your own too, just be advised that if it's
"murderers' guild will happily you, no questions asked, as long as you have E somewhere on your character sheet" you will get laughed out.

Reputation with law or general public may not necessarily match your actual deeds and will be distinct from your ALIGNMENT.

FTFY

I thought we've already established the only only thing physically keeping me from slaughtering villagers as LG is disturbance in the farce as if million of voices REEEE'd in butthurt and then were suddenly silenced.

There is generally no good reason to specifically seek bad reputation, ever.

Millionaire rappers would disagree

As long as you cannot operate overtly reputation is an asset and bad reputation is a liability. If you are the biggest fish in the pond, then you probably can operate on fear alone, but you still need certain reputation. For example people won't surrender if they expect you'll slaughter them anyway.

and you just gave an example of a guild that you have to murder someone to get into...

So? They'll probably still want you to be discreet about it meaning no reputation hit.

By doing it based on a system rather than quest trigger or doing something more with this classification. Preferably both.
As it is the quest would play out the same without any alignment system.

Wrong. His character changes after this. The alignment system is a guide for this change and helps the system react to it.

Make a simple experiment:
Play through this quest as normal, but glue a post-it note over the place alignment is displayed on character screen. It still works!

The ruleset as a whole can respond to this change. Spells and items will respond to his new alignment.

Yeah, except we've already established why sense alignment, detect evil, and so on are shit.

If it weren’t Baldur’s Gate, we might see more reactivity than this. In PnP you certainly could.

And it wouldn't require alignment. Since I don't think I have the luxury of not having to state the obvious ITT: the concept of a test of character predates DnD.

And as to your reference to it not being a “system”, he’s an NPC.

And that's why it's a useless example.
Because there is no system in play here.

I have explained already why alignment targeting mechanics is generally shit and how to replace it with something more interesting (ethos based weapons and powers, mind and aura reading spells, more specific protections and offensive effects).

The more you describe it the more it sounds like a rip-off of alignments. Know alignment, detect alignment, protection from evil...

I am showing how anything alignments can do this can do as well (or better) so of course it will be carbon copy of alignment functionality - that's what I'm showing here.

The difference is that you don't get a retard friendly token colored for your convenience. You may know what character is thinking but not their general outlook or especially predigested value judgement. You might be able to protect yourself from specific threat, possibly in threat specific manner too, if you scouted ahead, sought lore or other information (or guessed right), rather than 90% of enemies.

And from ethos you also get specific rules so there is no potential for confusion like with alignment (not to mention this is what RL religions, laws and various codes of conduct do), and specific rules can be checked mechanically, but since there is no value judgement attached you also get no assurance that the ethos keeps you "good" - after all morality (character in the original but here it'd be needlessly confusing) is what you are in the dark.
This makes roleplaying your character's values even out of the coverage of the mechanics arguably the only justified exception from mechanically void actions being larping. Not having alignment system simply keeps this honest. Who will know if you stab that traveller in the middle of nowhere for a purse of gold he's carrying? You will know, and that should be enough. Clinging to a descriptor to let the devs/GM tell you whether what you did was ok is for the weak.

Are you doing that thing of yours again where you assume that someone is talking about something you really want to ridicule whenever you don't know what they are talking about?

I literally asked you what you meant. You can just answer.

That does not follow.

There are many examples where it doesn't work like that.
For example look up what happens when you're trying to use linear regression/classifier on a dataset that is not linear/linearly separable. You don't get a good outcome somewhere between two bad extremes. You simply get different mixes of bad.

Or, for a more down to earth example, assume you need to police some population effectively and justly.
One extreme is your policing force doing nothing, the other is it beating everyone all the time. In between it just beats random citizens randomly with varying frequency - one of those frequencies must be the point where the policing will be just and effective, right?
Well, wrong.
Because randomly beating people is not a valid solution here. Neither is alignment.

You set a false metric in your example. No police force beats everyone, does nothing or beats random people. That’s stupid and...wait for it...a strawman. I’m not advocating alignment modifiers be employed randomly.

A better example would be a meal that’s too hot or too cold can’t be heated to a temperature that’s just right...

Woosh.
I am specifically showing an example of something that doesn't have a sane middle between two extremes.
You can stick with the two more technical examples I also provided, but I'm not holding my breath - this one was specifically chosen in case you weren't equipped to get the other two and it sailed right over your head.

Oh wait it can. Guess I’m right again lol. What a shock.

The parrot almost fits as you're employing pigeon chess debating tactics:

• knock over all the figures
• shit on the chessboard
• fly back to your flock proclaiming victory

 

[Fedora Master]

Alignment has to be more than just a general outlook. It exists in a setting where Good and Evil are real, tangible natural forces ffs.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Alignment has to be more than just a general outlook. It exists in a setting where Good and Evil are real, tangible natural forces ffs.

Yeah that’s why alignment exists at all in D&D.
“Do what thou wilt.” doesn’t work for a setting where good and evil are core themes.

There can be nuance, but ultimately for your good hero to battle evil and have proper reactivity from the world and other players, the ruleset should define what evil is.

If you don’t, you veer into 5e territory where orcs can’t be all bad because WotC think they really are just black people.

Rules are there for consistency, both for the world and for the players. But a child like DraQ just wants to play pretend and refuses to abide by rules.

I think he’d be really annoying to play D&D with, but more likely he’d just get bored and play Skyrim anyway.

 

[Atlantico]

Concrete rules... Concrete rules... Oh! You mean like ethos?

Ethos.. ethos... Oh! You mean like alignment? You pretentious autistic fuck.

 

[DraQ]

Alignment has to be more than just a general outlook. It exists in a setting where Good and Evil are real, tangible natural forces ffs.

And this cheapens this setting.

Alignment has to be more than just a general outlook. It exists in a setting where Good and Evil are real, tangible natural forces ffs.

Yeah that’s why alignment exists at all in D&D.
“Do what thou wilt.” doesn’t work for a setting where good and evil are core themes.

There can be nuance, but ultimately for your good hero to battle evil and have proper reactivity from the world and other players, the ruleset should define what evil is.

If you don’t, you veer into 5e territory where orcs can’t be all bad because WotC think they really are just black people.

Rules are there for consistency, both for the world and for the players. But a child like DraQ just wants to play pretend and refuses to abide by rules.

I think he’d be really annoying to play D&D with, but more likely he’d just get bored and play Skyrim anyway.

The childish thing is to need to be told what is right or wrong.
Adults think for themselves.

 

[Atlantico]

The childish thing is to need to be told what is right or wrong.

Like a child, you don't understand why you're wrong. Like a child you have a tantrum, because of this.

Adults think for themselves.

Children think for themselves as well, you dumbfuck. Every time you think you're being "smart", you write some banal drivel.

Autism is incurable. Sadly, for you. More sadly for us.

 

[Fedora Master]

Alignment has to be more than just a general outlook. It exists in a setting where Good and Evil are real, tangible natural forces ffs.

And this cheapens this setting.

Treating it as a wishy washy "Wanna be an asshole y/n" mechanic does.
Taking it to its logical extreme creates interesting results. See Planescape and especially the factions in Sigil.

The Harmonium began as an adventuring party of Lawful types - apparently, Lawful Good types - on some pissant Prime world called "Ortho". This party had a lot of success in clearing up evil and getting shit done, so they just kept getting bigger, and bigger, until eventually Ortho was swept by an Anti-Chaos Crusade. In dedicated pursuit to this, they wiped out all chaos on their own world - read, they committed genocide against everyone that was Neutral or Chaotic in alignment. Including Neutral Good and Chaotic Good types.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

You can always hack together workarounds.

Right, but you don’t have to and sometimes it’s a bad idea. And you admit it. Great. Now we can move on from this analogy.

Alignment doesn't give you anything over whatever you already have.

Because you say so. DraQ circular logic(tm).

I’ve already said what it gives you and you admit an ethos system would be useful, but you just ignore it because you can’t admit you’re wrong.

Nothing easier than verifying that:
Hey, Shitty Kitty , have I strawmanned your argument?

Whether he admits it or not, you did and everyone can read it.

To me it looks like Shitty's wizard advocates moderation in use of magic and abstaining from using it needlessly (a common trope in fantasy) which looks like proposing rules that are supposed to make things better.

Except his example doesn’t say that. Again, you clearly understand his example is broken and are trying to fill in the gaps for him.

This also demonstrates why clearly defined alignments are needed and superior: because bios like this are too subject to interpretation.

If that's NG, is summoning a sweetroll (let's see what happens now) magically an evil act?

Depends on why you summon it.

Again, you don’t understand the difference between action and intent.

He was talking about a mage, paladin and a monk as three examples of his LG characters to show how alignment doesn't give you anything.
Are you illiterate or just hard of thinking?

A mage has no alignment class requirements. You’re the one specifically bringing up alignment class requirements, not him or I.

If it were about class requirements, his examples could have been shortened to “duh, paladins are good”.

It leaks the information player, GM or even both shouldn't have access to.
It damages tension and mystery.

No, it doesn’t. Even if you use know alignment and find out someone is evil, it isn’t the same as reading their mind.

Say there was a murder. You cast detect evil. You find an evil guy. Did he do it? You don’t know. You might suspect, just like you might suspect the orc over the high elf, but that’s not proof and paladins for example specifically require proof for action.

It’s no different that someone acting suspicious. It’s not proof, just a possible indicator.

PS: a wizard casting magic on random strangers who have no idea what you’re doing is a good way to get punched in the face or lynched by a mob of villagers.

It prevents ambivalence

If it did, alignment shifts wouldn’t be possible.

It obscures actual character building and motivation with conveniently braindead meta-score for players to focus on

Why would the player focus on this more than any other stat or your totally-not-alignment “ethos” system? Silly argument.

• It wastes time with completely pointless misunderstandings if players and GM don't stick to obvious cookie cutter archetypes and worn cliches.

• It thus funnels players and GMs towards shitty cliches worthy of kindergarten play-pretend.

These points are both the same point and both wrong.

As I’ve said, if that were true, alignment shifts wouldn’t be possible.

You have already provided an example of something like this in an expatriate kit.
The thing is that with how ill defined the alignment is, you get no guarantees that plugging this hole here doesn't open another one somewhere else.

As I said, the expatriate kit commits no chaotic act. If it were chaotic, he would need to do penance at least or risk losing his class at worst. I already stated the reason for it not being chaotic as well: he isn’t the one breaking the contract, his liege betrayed it already.

I’ve repeated this around 10x itt now.

Again, rules are rules. Even if you’re not smart enough to get them, you still have to follow them.

Concrete rules... Concrete rules... Oh! You mean like ethos?

Like alignments. But if you want to call it ethos, sure.

You have to play them with your own mind that is creating their interpretation.
So in the end you are playing a distorted facet of yourself.
If you don't really get what would motivate certain character type, you can't meaningfully play them. At best you'll end up with a stupid cardboard caricature.

And the handbook recommends against playing alignments you’d find boring for this reason. Oops I mean “ethoi”. Not everyone is so one-dimensional.

Some players have enough brain cells to play a hero or a villain.

Clearly not all of them though.

And why is my character slaughtering a bunch of innocent villagers if they have "Lawful Good" in their character sheet?

In this case, probably because his player has Aspergers.

If an attribute system required player to politely refrain from rolling huge boulders with a strength score of 3, we would have rightfully decried it as useless.
Why the double standard?

Agency and the fact there’s nothing physically limiting a choice. You can choose to do anything at any time, but your choices demonstrate your beliefs and enough of them demonstrate a change in your beliefs. As a man thinks, so is he, but by their fruits you shall know them.

Just like there’s nothing physically limiting you from trying to pick up said boulders even if you have noodle arms from typing bad arguments online all day, but while you will fail, doing it enough might strengthen you.

Once there is a limitation, like alignment specific items or classes, the game outright restricts you.

Because you can’t be a righteous paladin if you’re actually an unrighteousness murderous jackass.

Silly me, the proper way to recruit a murderer for hire is to put up an add in the town's square.

It’d still be less stupid than the psychic Dark Brotherhood knowing every murder being codified into the ruleset.

And I have provided an alternative example.
You can provide your own too, just be advised that if it's
"murderers' guild will happily you, no questions asked, as long as you have E somewhere on your character sheet" you will get laughed out.

Hard to parse this but I assume you mean that joining an assassin’s guild can’t depend on your alignment. And it doesn’t. However, picking assassin as a class isn’t a good act, so being an assassin and demonstrating the skills of one would require a non-good nature.

Just joining an assassin’s guild is kind of a dumb idea to begin with, since they are usually secretive and generally don’t hire random people. Though I guess mercenaries could gain the reputation of being discrete in their work.

Alignment wouldn’t limit this. It shouldn’t. What it would do is properly classify the difference between reputation and internal character. Internal character would limit class choices and that would preclude or discourage certain actions.

But back to the example: what would prevent a paladin from joining an assassin’s guild:

For a paladin, an assassination would be an evil act, instantly ending his career and losing his class. That and the fact that he has no assassination skills, since he’s not an assassin and can’t be one due to his alignment, prevents the Paladin from joining an assassin’s guild. You can also add reputation onto that if you want. Not reputation, the fact that it’s evil would be enough.

Writing in some other way for characters even with good reputations to join such a guild wouldn’t be hard. You could have them recruit mercenaries and pick mercs that seemed discrete. Put a contact in the thieves guild that recruits assassins.

I still feel it’s unrealistic, but it’s better than nothing. I think a player who picks assassin as his class should have the opportunity to start as part of such a network. Perhaps an orphan trained from a young age. Or else someone who is part of a thieves guild who is part of a thieves guild that takes contracts, but the guild itself being The Dork Brotherhood and finding random murderers who kill people because they’re EVUL is a bit lazy. Maybe Bhaal or Cyric worshipers might do this. Lame though. It’d suck to have all assassin’s guild be tied to a certain religion or else not be able to recruit people. It’s just a gimmick and a writing crutch.

I thought we've already established the only only thing physically keeping me from slaughtering villagers as LG is

An alignment isn’t designed to prevent you from doing anything you can reasonably do without limitation. Suggesting it should is retarded and a non-argument. You might as well say the system is useless because it won’t let you fly or eat a polar bear whole. It’s not what it was designed for.

Woosh.
I am specifically showing an example of something that doesn't have a sane middle between two extremes.

No, you didn’t. You provided an idiotic example that only an idiot would do. It was a classic strawman argument, hypocrite.

A police force could try beating only criminals, only violent criminals, only violent criminals who resist arrest, only violent criminals who resist arrest and can’t be tasered. “Hurr hurr beat people randomly!” is not an option any rational human would suggest. What a stupid argument. Beating no one and beating everyone is similarly stupid.

It’d be like saying that a meal is at absolute zero or as hot as the sun, therefore it’s impossible to find a good temperature because you’d need to spend the next 1000 years heating it to random temperatures.

How you can make such a dumb argument is beyond me, but you not only made it, you defended it. Laughable, but not unexpected.

As long as you cannot operate overtly reputation is an asset and bad reputation is a liability. If you are the biggest fish in the pond, then you probably can operate on fear alone, but you still need certain reputation. For example people won't surrender if they expect you'll slaughter them anyway.

You simultaneously argue that reputation is a single number where everyone will think you’re a mindless savage if it’s low and a complex system where the assassin’s guild knows you as an individual even though you save refugees as a cover and to get good prices at the market.

Your argument is disingenuous and in bad faith.

Make a simple experiment:
Play through this quest as normal, but glue a post-it note over the place alignment is displayed on character screen. It still works!

Because good and evil, chaos and neutrality are concepts that exist without the alignment system. But with it they are defined in a system so that players and DMs can play within an agreed up and well-defined framework.

Your lawful good paladin can’t join the assassin’s guild without losing his class. So sorry, mr munchkin. Collect your participation trophy elsewhere.

I am showing how anything alignments can do this can do as well (or better) so of course it will be carbon copy of alignment functionality - that's what I'm showing here.

So alignments are bad, you just want a system that’s a carbon copy of the alignment system, but with a different name. Ok lol. From now on just call alignments ethos and quit wasting everyone’s time.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Alignment has to be more than just a general outlook. It exists in a setting where Good and Evil are real, tangible natural forces ffs.

And this cheapens this setting.

Treating it as a wishy washy "Wanna be an asshole y/n" mechanic does.
Taking it to its logical extreme creates interesting results. See Planescape and especially the factions in Sigil.

The Harmonium began as an adventuring party of Lawful types - apparently, Lawful Good types - on some pissant Prime world called "Ortho". This party had a lot of success in clearing up evil and getting shit done, so they just kept getting bigger, and bigger, until eventually Ortho was swept by an Anti-Chaos Crusade. In dedicated pursuit to this, they wiped out all chaos on their own world - read, they committed genocide against everyone that was Neutral or Chaotic in alignment. Including Neutral Good and Chaotic Good types.

This has all been explained to him. He just ignores it and rants about how his alignment rip off system is better or how alignments should be removed because reputation alone is enough.

There’s no getting through to him. All his arguments are illogical and disingenuous. He won’t acknowledge when he’s been proven wrong.

He wants to play Skyrim with a few “hardcore” spergy mods that let him eat his alignment cake while having it too. I say let him.

 

[Shitty Kitty]

Nothing easier than verifying that:
Hey, Shitty Kitty , have I strawmanned your argument?

To me it looks like Shitty's wizard advocates moderation in use of magic and abstaining from using it needlessly (a common trope in fantasy) which looks like proposing rules that are supposed to make things better.
If that's NG, is summoning a sweetroll (let's see what happens now) magically an evil act?

That's pretty much exactly what I was implying, yes. Wizard would be considered LG by alignment system because he lives by a set of rules about how, when and why to do magic, and those rules are intended to foster the betterment of himself and others who may or may not even be spellcasters. Said wizard would probably refrain from magicking in various things that can be procured mundanely and reasonably - avoids upsetting any economies, gives the non-spellcasters the ability to both ply and improve their trades, less chance of magical fuckery where there doesn't need to be magical fuckery. He would still absolutely magic in whatever was needed when the chips were down - he wouldn't quibble about putting a fletcher out of business when creating some arrows to refill his or an ally's quiver in a situation where it's pretty unreasonable to duck out to a suitable merchant, because that would be stupid. But he's not going to promote laziness or cheapskate bullshit in himself or in others if he can help it. He also would generally believe in the idea that you don't throw an Empowered Fireball when a simple magic missile will do, and you don't use magic missile when it would be more reasonable to use something that subdues, or simply remind whoever he's facing that he's willing to just turn them over to the local constable for a bit of jail time and a lesson learned but he's ready to atomize them if they become a serious threat. Restraint, responsibility, consideration for others and a belief that as a powerful force, magic is a tool for the betterment of many.

Treating it as a wishy washy "Wanna be an asshole y/n" mechanic does.
Taking it to its logical extreme creates interesting results. See Planescape and especially the factions in Sigil.

The Harmonium began as an adventuring party of Lawful types - apparently, Lawful Good types - on some pissant Prime world called "Ortho". This party had a lot of success in clearing up evil and getting shit done, so they just kept getting bigger, and bigger, until eventually Ortho was swept by an Anti-Chaos Crusade. In dedicated pursuit to this, they wiped out all chaos on their own world - read, they committed genocide against everyone that was Neutral or Chaotic in alignment. Including Neutral Good and Chaotic Good types.

Genocide of goodly folk? Wow, that's not very "Lawful Good". Pretty sure even a lot of "Lawful Neutral" archetypes would balk at large-scale, unnecessary slaughter.

This has all been explained to him. He just ignores it and rants about how his alignment rip off system is better or how alignments should be removed because reputation alone is enough.

There’s no getting through to him. All his arguments are illogical and disingenuous. He won’t acknowledge when he’s been proven wrong.

He wants to play Skyrim with a few “hardcore” spergy mods that let him eat his alignment cake while having it too. I say let him.

Pack it in, leg o' lamb, you're clearly not smart enough to think outside boxes. Maybe go play some 2E. You know, the edition pushed out by someone who utterly HATED D&D and fantasy and wanted to do Buck Rogers stuff.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

That's pretty much exactly what I was implying, yes.

Pretty much exactly not what you said though.

Go ahead and try to fix your mistake retroactively. It won’t matter to the codexers who have functioning brains and can read the drivel you wrote with their own eyes.

Wizard would be considered LG by alignment system because he lives by a set of rules about how, when and why to do magic, and those rules are intended to foster the betterment of himself and others who may or may not even be spellcasters. Said wizard would probably refrain from magicking in various things that can be procured mundanely and reasonably - avoids upsetting any economies, gives the non-spellcasters the ability to both ply and improve their trades, less chance of magical fuckery where there doesn't need to be magical fuckery. He would still absolutely magic in whatever was needed when the chips were down - he wouldn't quibble about putting a fletcher out of business when creating some arrows to refill his or an ally's quiver in a situation where it's pretty unreasonable to duck out to a suitable merchant, because that would be stupid. But he's not going to promote laziness or cheapskate bullshit in himself or in others if he can help it. He also would generally believe in the idea that you don't throw an Empowered Fireball when a simple magic missile will do, and you don't use magic missile when it would be more reasonable to use something that subdues, or simply remind whoever he's facing that he's willing to just turn them over to the local constable for a bit of jail time and a lesson learned but he's ready to atomize them if they become a serious threat. Restraint, responsibility, consideration for others and a belief that as a powerful force, magic is a tool for the betterment of many.

Imagine thinking that writing all this shit on your character sheet is better than just marking down “Lawful Good”.



I also like how now he’s making up dumb rules about conserving magic like there’s global warming or something. “Sorry, I can’t cast fireball. How about an environmentally friendly magic middle instead?”

What a joke.

 

[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"

 

[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"

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