Alignment

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As part of my continued effort to fail my exams:

So, I've been doing some RPing in D&D settings recently - namely Planescape and FR (cross-planes type of adventure). Naturally certain things that are part of the D&D system and have become part of the game's campaign settings crop up to inform play every now and again, and while I like some of these things they do tend to get in the way sometimes.

Specifically, I'm talking about alignment. Alignment is especially important to Planescape - it's pretty well impossible to play a Planescape game without bringing alignment into it regardless of what system you're using, because the entire setting revolves around the idea.

Unfortunately, alignment is usually used in a way that's antithetical to the type of game I want to play. Now, I quite like the alignment system (I think that makes me an anomoly, tbh), but it's difficult to play a game that focuses around moral choices when you have what your character should do dictated by two words (or just one, if you happen to be neutral). More than that, there's a certain ugly idea that alignment dictates personality, interests, and so such of a character.

As far as I can tell, this is at no point explicitly stated in any source material (I imagine specific statements would say the opposite, actually), however it's implied a hell of a lot and in general D&D culture is the norm. I'll illustrate with an example.

I'm playing a neutral evil character, and trying to inject personality in him (thus far he's been as interesting as a brick). So, someone asks me what his alignment he is and as soon as I say 'neutral evil' it's suggested that he'd be a mercenary sort. I suddenly feel like headdesking, because there's alignment-dictating-personality, and it's ugly and leads to two dimensional boring characters. A NE character - by virtue of his morals - should apparently be that he's a self-serving arsehole who cares for nothing but himself. He might torture puppies in his spare time too, while plotting to take POWAH!

Just after I shoot this down as uninteresting, it's suggested that his ultimate goal is to take over some prime world. Really - wtf? Why? No reason other than his alignment would make someone think this character was interested in such a thing, as far as I can see.

I, for one, don't see why evil people can't be genuinely nice people. Hold close friendships, socialise normally, celebrate when things are going right, commiserate when they go to hell. This is what pretty well everyone who in the real world you might be tempted to ascribe the label of 'evil' to does. Saddam Hussein was by all accounts a very nice guy - good person to hang out with by his two million dollar pool and whatnot.

The main problem with alignment is that it's impossible to construct three dimensional characters if you inform their interests and personality by their moral outlook - that's not even a fundamental property of the system, just something that gaming culture has superimposed on top of it. If you want to create a worthwhile character, you have to build their relationships and personality largely seperate of what they value, or you end up playing a stereotype.

Just another off-hand example from a different game. After a significant time of playing, one player asks another 'so, what alignment is your character?'. They answer NE (or maybe it was CE, don't quite remember). All actions up until this point had been consistent with this idea (nothing overt), but as soon as the alignment was defined suddenly the character started being a real dick. This character wasn't necessarily a nice person beforehand - they were quite normal, really - dealing with other people in a sensible manner. But suddenly every other line is an insult, starting immediately from the point the alignment was defined.

This kind of fugly 'alignment decides everything about your character' thinking is a cancerous attachment to D&D settings, and needs to be removed before any complex characters can be made. Creating personality and goals for a character should probably be done before choosing any kind of alignment so that this strange compulsion doesn't hijack the character and turn them into an alignment-fullfilling automaton.

Also worth considering is how subjective/objective alignment is. In D&D alignment seems like a pretty objective force - but does it hinge on a character's intentions and motives or how they go about doing things?

The best example I can give without invoking Godwin's Law - Che Guevara. His intention - to create a better place, his way of doing it - executing whoever's in the way - 'ends justify the means' (this is a gross oversimplification I'm sure - just take it as it's intended). So in D&D terms is he good, evil, or neither? Arguments could be made each way - it's something that the group should probably work out before play, because otherwise it's a confusing mess.

I just checked the PHB (2E, and 3.5E) to check facts on what I'm saying, and it's worse than I anticipated The 2E PHB is especially bad - I suspect the reason 3.5 isn't so bad is just because it doesn't go into it at so much depth.

It then goes into a long example. Regardless, everything there is pushing an alignment stereotype onto the character's personality in a painful way. Seriously, if this is how 'evil' characters all actually acted, they could never get anything done ever and the world would be full of good and chirping birds and butterflies.

tl;dr: Alignment != personality, or interests, or manner, or whatever. It's purely a moral indicator. Morality != personality. It's why you hear interviews on the news that such and such axe murderer was a really nice guy and we never expected anything like this. Or he was always such a dick, we didn't know he would run into the burning building to save the stranger's kitten. Characters are more than their alignment.

 

Read Champion of Ruin (Heroes of Horror, I believe is another one, I'm just too lazy to dig it out). It will tell you everything you need to know about creating interesting evil characters.

Evil characters (especially lawful evil characters) have meaningful and close friendships, genuinely fall in love and get married. Evil characters may even think they're good characters, committing good acts from time to time, which in turn rationalize their belief that they are good.

It's not uncommon for evil characters to act with the "greatest good" in mind. Champions of Ruin talks about how evil characters may have noble motivations, but go too far in trying to achieve their goals. 3.5 alignment is specifically suppose to be more flexible then 2ed alignment. We're not all playing Yugoloths, Devils and Demons here.

 

Champion of Ruin is not in Heroes of Horror.

My view of alignment is a moral and philosophical outlook and ethical priority.

Evil characters are in it for themselves, may have tastes that others don't like, or whatever. It does not exclude them from love.

To them good is usually a tool. It is there to make money from those that will pay them to do it. The Evil rogue will try to defend a city to protect his territory so that he has people to steal from. They will sink to almost any depths to get what they want. Good usually won't resort to torture, slaughter or other cruelty to achieve their ends...

 

My bad, Heroes of Horror does not talk about how to play evil characters. The Book of Vile Darkness is the other book that talks about playing evil characters (though Champions of Ruin provides a lot more information then the Book of Vile Darkness unless your looking to make a champion of evil).

 

@ Ilmater's Suffering:
Well, it's good that there are source books trying to correct the problem to some extent, but it doesn't really address the problem - which is with the general set of beliefs that gamers seem to hold about characters and alignment.

To happily steal what Gnarff said to show what I'm pretty sure is a typical way of thinking about alignment and D&D:

I'm wondering why an evil rogue couldn't be genuinely patriotic? Or defend his city because he just believes it's a great place. These soughts of beliefs are alignment independent, and lumping all evil characters under the stereotype of 'in it for the money/power' is basically what I'm saying is a bad idea.

Now, perhaps the evil rogue who loves his city would go about defending it in a different way than a good aligned rogue - would have less problems in doing 'evil' things to get the job done. That makes sense - that's a genuine moral decision which would be informed by alignment. Things such as 'am I interested in defending this city' are not - it depends on entirely different elements of the rogue's character.

To once more summarise: Alignment should not have as much influence in determining the personality and beliefs of a character as a lot of people seem to give it. It may be a factor in deciding how to go about something, but it by no means controls who that character is. Giving it more power than this just leads to perpetuating the same flat stereotypes.

 

By D+D terms, fascists are lawful evil and they LOVE their countries. Use real world examples if you have to educate your fellow D+D players. Where Nazis mercenaries? Did they not love their fellow ethnic Germans? What about Joseph Stalin? Do we think he was indifferent to the proletariat?

Just a tip from my personal experience. Create a personality first and throw an alignment on top of it. If the DM feels you're not playing to the alignment, make him change your alignment. Unless you're something like a blackguard or an assassin, alignment shouldn't be too important. Your character's personality should come first, alignment is just there for things like unholy blight, protection from evil and the such (in taint campaigns, there is a variant rule to remove alignments all together as spells target taint rather then alignment).

Anyway, just ignore alignment. There's a reason it can change. If you have a decent DM let him worry about it... however if you do have a bad DM expect your alignment to constantly be changing (avoid those games). It's not like your character should be thinking "I'm neutral evil, how does neutral evil act?". Its a tool for those interacting with you.

 

This is, in fact, exactly what I'm trying to say - only concisely.

 

The worst thing about alignment is that people actually do view it as "my character is in this box. So this is what he should do!"



"What about his personality?"
"He's lawful evil."



Then you get people who don't believe anybody should be any kind of neutral. Having four alignments at any time of LG, CG, LE and CE



Or you get people who view alignments as LINEAR.
as in... from Good to Evil:
LG - NG - CG - LN - TN - NG - LE - NE - CE
seriously... WTF?!



Characters are people first, statistics are tertiary. Secondary? Most likely the player or their "2d concept" before being fleshed out.

I always assign my characters numerical values for alignment. Showing HOW FAR they are along any given alignment axis rather that putting them in pretty little boxes.

 

I switched from 2nd ed to 3rd ed, and I use the same alignment system than NWN - the alignment can shift.

 

Alignment should be able to shift, perspectives change or a player may really not play their alignment properly at all and need adjusting.

Even better when DMing, don't tell the player when their alignment has changed

Just let them wait until alignment is effected via spell or detection and see who's hit

That's normally a wake up call for foolish paladins as well they're virtueous, not foolish.

 

Yes indeed! This seems to be the mistake that 4E alignment is making official, if I'm understanding it correctly. Alignment would be much better presented as a grid of some sort - or some other representation. Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil are opposites, sure - but Lawful Neutral is as close to Lawful Good as Neutral Good is.

Also, I often get the feeling that Neutral Good and Neutral Evil aren't really all that far apart. Don't have much in the way of rationalisation for that, but they seem very much two sides of the same coin for me - don't get the same vibe for the other alignments so much. It probably should be there, but residual 'Chaotic evil is *the most evil!*' thinking may be getting in the way.

I'm pondering fluid alignments - and I don't mean alignments changing every now and then, but thinking of each different act in its own bubble - was that act Good, evil, neither, or actively-neutral (which is a strange concept, IMO - pitching in both sides to keep it balanced, and rather distinct from neutral as not-caring about a particular side), or was it Lawful, chaotic, or neither? It would need some other mechanics to back it up though to make that kind of tracking worthwhile and interesting, but it would get rid of the set-morality problem.

 

I think the problem is that the D&D system (pre-4.0) is limited. I played a bit of Palladium when I was younger and they have a different system with two good alignments, two selfish alignments (and let's face it, most regular people are inherently selfish) and three evil alignments. The aberrant evil is actually closer to what you seem to be after - generally aberrant evil people were loyal, wouldn't sell out a friend and didn't believe in things like torture. For the short time I tried the system (which was good - I just didn't have the motivation to play a P&P game), I played an aberrant evil assassin.

 

For the D&D alignments, I often substitute altruism for good, and selfishness for evil.

If you put it that way, a lot of us would be neutral evil - wanting whats best for us, sometimes at the expense of others. But the evil connotation is a bit strong.

If you think about it, there is no reason that someone neutral evil couldnt be more evil than someone who is chaotic evil. Chaotic just means they dont care about rules and laws, not that they will necessarily break them.

 

EXACTLY!

To say CE is the most evil is one of the most ridiculous concepts I've ever encountered. (In regards to alignment)

 

Exactly. Earlier editions of D&D listed alignment on two axes for a reason. One evil is not more evil than another, it's just different means to an end. Lawful preferes one toolset, Chaotic Evil prefers a different way of doing things. Neutral is simply more pragmatic in it's approach...

 

Now an alignment really doesn't reach whether the character could be considered 'the most evil there is' no matter if the character's alignment would be CE, NE, or LE.

For a long time now I've thought that 'the most evil there is' would be a CN character, verging on madness, with huge amounts of power. And I mean huuuge amounts.

Because of the inconstistency, the unpredictability and the tendency for chaos and anarchy...and with the power this would result in extreme.

Putting this into BGII, it's far less surprising that Keldorn gets along much better with Korgan than Jan, Haerrie, CN Anomen or Jaheira for that matter. I think that the neutral spectrum is more opposite to the good than the evil is, because of the relative unpredictability.

Putting it simple a CE might be bad for everyone else, but a CN with power is just about bad for everyone, including herself. Selfishness is not detrimental, but insanity is and there's no nut like a nut who's CN.

Just my humble

Then there's this interesting thing I've been wondering: How do you play a LE monk? If selfishness and moneygrabbing tendencies are traditionally something which makes a characters alignment evil, then how in the Ten Towns is a LE monk good for herself? "Uhh, yeah, I'm evil and wanting to be a tyrant and all, but I can't take the money for myself since it'll kill my Qi..." Might be just my lack of imagination which raises these kind of questions, but still, the point being, which ethos does the monk follow and are they contradictory: that of the monk, or that of the alignment?

 

CN isn't neccessarily insane, in 2ed it was outlined as the alignment of the mentally unstable but that was generally damped down for 3ed.

A CN character caused enough willful harm during her exploits they would shift towards CE anyway, even if their actions were not willfully causing harm, if they did not learn from such incidents and incited similar again they would still shift down the alignments.

As for neutral being more opposite to good than evil, I'm afraid I would have to disagree. To be neutral does not mean you are unpredictable, it simply means they either are not active enough for a cause to be towards either end of the balance or strive to create balance in their wake.

Insanity is but a small possibility for CN and a small possibility for possible damage they can cause. If a character is not in control of their senses and faculties how can they utilise their power effectively? They need some control and stability to be able to use their abilities and that aspect that empowers the insanity is what determines the character overall.

Action is different from intention. But both need to coincide to remain in keeping with an alignment.

 

I find it that the most harm is done by those who either are capable of keeping their malevolent intentions hidden or those who do not care of the consequences of their actions, whether they be good or bad and even for themselves. The power determines the scope of the consequences. Now with a character who does not care for the consequences of her actions it's hard to gain power, but when it happens, it's the worst thing for both worlds, good and evil.

 

In a game with Loreseeker (character: Tuori) and Aikanaro (character: Nazm), I just played a rather complicated character that's hard to define moral-wise. Her name is Aria, and she's a paladin or fighter/cleric in service of Lathander.

The situation is this. Nazm is a tanar'ri cambion, who is in Baldur's Gate. A thief (Sedi Snaketongue) tipped off the Lathanderites about his whereabouts, in return for money. Several paladins attack Nazm and Tuori in an inn (Blade and Star, to be precise), and Nazm gates in a demon. The demon tears up the paladins in an unnecessarily gory manner while our heroes flip out the window. Later, Tuori is mistaken for Nazm and captured, and a bunch of paladins find Nazm. He kills one and manages to flee.

Later, Aria comes across Nazm for a deal. She will release Tuori, whom she believes is good (Tuori is, in D&D terms, CG), in return for the capture of Nazm. Nazm retorts that they are just trying to get off the Prime, which they were, and suggests Aria lead him to the portal so they can all bugger off. She agrees - but as Nazm turns to leave, she stabs Nazm in the shoulder from behind while his weapon was sheathed before walking away, as a reminder for him to keep his word.

Later, she brings Tuori to him, but Nazm comes out with a hostage of a young human girl. He claims she is an alu-fiend, and he will take her away (she's sleeping due to a potent sleeping drug, played out before) so they're not a problem to BG. Aria attempts to negotiate the child, but Nazm refuses, and threatens to kill the kid. Nazm refuses to tell Aria where the portal is (it's in a wardrobe in the Duchal Palace), telling her to shut up and open doors for them while he leads. She agrees unhappily. However, on the way there, Aria draws her sword and stabs Nazm in the back while her fellow priest Banished him (and the girl) to the Abyss. Then, they resolve to interrogate the truth from Tuori about the whereabouts of the portal, so that they might destroy it, and take her back to the Temple of Lathander. They intend to use a truth potion.

Now. I had tried to play Aria as CG: the end justifies the means. From a wider perspective, I think she is good: She is trying to get rid of the demon, and she does succeed. She is merely protecting the city of Baldur's Gate and upholding her duties. On the other hand, she backstabs the demon twice, double-crosses him, and unfortunately led to a young human girl being in the abyss (though not to her knowledge). Would you call her good, or evil? Discuss.

 

Another note on the above situation - at no point in Nazm do anything to deserve being hunted through the city by an army of paladins. The attacks were, basically, bigotry and came about entirely based on him being a fiend. Is bigotry, in D&D terms, 'good'? Or is it seperate from good and evil?

(The paladins asked no questions - they attacked first with the intent to kill)