Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ductape]

WotC have been slowly butchering D&D ever since they bought it. Dont get me wrong, I had good times with 3.x but I am the kind of DM that makes rulings and doesnt let the players throw rules at me.

I dont have much hope for D&D Next. I would keep my eye on the Gygax family in the near future and see what they come up with. Looks like they are getting back into the game industry.

[Neonivek]

Also, seriously, 11 posts until alignment argument? That's like the Godwin's Law of DnD discussions, isn't it?

It is because Allignment killed my last game as my character was actually being forced from his allignment for asking to be rewarded (something in the allignment book says is perfectly in my allignments perview of action). It Lead me to draw what I called "The Sphere of action". In which I discovered that Chaotic Neutral is the perfect Lawful Good allignment and they cannot be forced from their allignment or repremanded for doing so.

Nothing feels more like a slap in the face then someone saying "You arn't roleplaying your character right".

Also Neutral is a vast amount of viewpoints but it is often what I like to call "Unconventional morality". Someone of Honor would be Lawful Neutral. A normal Thief would indeed be either Neutral or Chaotic Neutral. They arn't nessisarily selfish, they could just be utilitarian or just lack any motivation to do the right thing.

The only interpretation of Neutral I dislike is the "Not THAAAT good" one. People often pick neutral to represent a good person who will do the right thing even if it means doing a bit of evil. Which my issue with that is that it is clearly a good character and they imagine "Good" to be Saintly.

---

Anyhow to me setting story was never too important as it is really just a book of ideas.

[Werdna]

Alignments are pure, 100% bullshit.  They should have been removed from the game a long time ago.  They are essentially role-playing training wheels for newbies.  They are a nice, safe straightjacket for your imagination.  My brain cringes every time I hear players discussing actions in relation to alignments, trying to groupthink their way to some sort of agreement over an ARTIFICIAL restraint that has no basis in the real world and of no value in a gaming one.  I puke every time I see someone take a popular show and make those charts trying to cram and reduce the characters into caricatures of themselves to satisfy D&D's horrid alignments.  Let's just name a crayon color for each character instead!  The notion that a character or worse, a race, must adhere to some pre-defined "morality rut" is a preposterous story-telling device.

The best good guys in literature and entertainment have moments of weakness, and occasionally do evil things.  The best bad guys likewise are sometimes good guys with an off-center moral compass.  Good and evil can also exist in the eye of the beholder.  Every time some kid says "Well I'm going to do X, because I'm chaotic neutral", a poor flumph gets turned over and will never, ever get up again.

Do things because it fits the character, and their background.  Do things because under pressure, sometimes people make uncharacteristic decisions.  Play a role, don't play an f'ing alignment.  When your character faces "choices" throughout a story, take off the fucking training wheels, and make a real choice.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At its best, alignment should've been a minor Monster Manual trait used as shorthand to a DM to give them a /rough/ idea of how a race behaves.  It never should have larded up to the point where it made it onto character sheets and we've got entire planes of existence based on these ridiculous concepts.  Its been a boat-anchor around D&D's neck for years.  Let's see, shall I play Call of Cthulhu where a jaunt into the Outer Realms will put me into contact with all sorts of mindbending horrors?  Or D&D where I might end up in the cotton candy fields of Ells... Elys... aw fuck it: El Chaotic Goodium.  Choices, choices...

[Neonivek]

It is kinda worse when you think about how Hypocritical Good is within the setting.

Good has NO problem with genocidal killing.

Yet a lot of DMs don't recognise that and will outright stop you from acting out the same values good has on others or enacting what would be considered fair justice for the time.

Thus we have a fantasy game where modern morality gets in the way. Where chopping off a thieves hands is considered evil because in the modern day it would be evil.

Thus we get the Allignment system COMPLETELY broken because you simply cannot bridge modern day sentiments and fantasy ones.

It is kinda reminded me of Tactics Ogre: LOCT where refusing to murder an entire town is in fact the "Chaotic" action that leads to a lot of hardship. Yet the Lawful choice was to follow orders and commit murder of hundreds or even thousands of villagers and actually leads to what is seemingly the better route. It is odd for a game to actually make the good route the one where the most sacrifices had to be made (and yet it isn't good versus evil. It is whether or not the ends justify the means).

[eharper256]

Generally I always ignore alignments in general and state to my players 'that's just your general outlook' rather than forcing it down peoples throats. My plots never have a good/evil component; everything my villians do is justifiable and most often just morally grey rather than puppy-eating evil. Like I said before, Unaligned was actually a good thing in 4e; it killed all of the easy plot-coupons and pretty much allowed you to ignore the rest.

[Neonivek]

That is how allignments are generally supposed to be played Eharper256. They are supposed to be rules of thumb on your characters beliefs that they can call to when they want to know how to act in a situation.

Their railroading comes from earlier editions where you were actually bolted down to the allignment. Something they have been trying to fix ever since.

[andrea]

in my opinions, alignments should be the result of character actions ( and reasons for such actions), rather than having actions as the result of alignment

[Werdna]

It is kinda reminded me of Tactics Ogre: LOCT where refusing to murder an entire town is in fact the "Chaotic" action that leads to a lot of hardship. Yet the Lawful choice was to follow orders and commit murder of hundreds or even thousands of villagers and actually leads to what is seemingly the better route. It is odd for a game to actually make the good route the one where the most sacrifices had to be made (and yet it isn't good versus evil. It is whether or not the ends justify the means).

That's exactly the mental straightjacket I am talking about.  The game tried to judge your action in an artificial way that brought you out of the story with the ridiculousness of their moral 'judgement', which did not match yours.  From that point forward you will be making decisions based on trying to meet this artificial judgement system, which you may not even agree with.  To me it is far more interesting to present no judgement whatsoever.  Let the player stew upon their decisions themselves.  If there is to be any judging, it should only be among the other characters involved, both player and non-, entirely within the context of their story.  Alignment is an unnecessary "meta" game mechanic.

eharper256: Kudos man.  I've always just put "off" in the alignment field on my character sheets.   

andrea: Agreed, but to what end, however?  What really is the point of trying to summarize a character into two words - what value are we adding to the game or story, other than to make it more puerile?  if your character is complex, and good in some ways, bad in others, and totally off the handle in certain situations, how do you judge all that?  Its like taking all the paints on a canvas, and insisting at the end that we mix them all together and come up with a single color.  Why not let the canvas speak for itself?

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, I've always looked at alignments as a guideline. Only for Paladins and Clerics does it matter, and even then it's less 'are you following your alignment' and more 'are you following the tenants of your religion/order'. The two tend to coincide, but certainly aren't a rigid match.

A Lawful Neutral God of Law, for instance, may not care about someone causing chaos as long as what they are doing isn't specifically against any laws.

And even there, it was mostly for issues of Protection from Good/Evil/Law/Chaos and the like than it was to control players.

In all other cases, I usually tell players to come up with a personality and play that. Alignment can be determined after the personality is revealed (either at creation or through play), if we ever bother to define it at all.

[Werdna]

Meph: The problem here is that you are still playing to the idea of alignment, even if it is a little bit.  I have to think a world would be infinitely more interesting if paladins and clerics simply served their various causes (divine or otherwise), and not some arbitrary alignment of that cause.  A paladin that begins to take actions detrimental to his Cause will suffer ostracism and be stripped of her powers.  The key thing here is that there are 9 alignments, but there are entire worlds full of Causes and Divinities that we can imagine.  It should be "its 0% playing towards an artificial game mechanic, and 100% attempting to follow the tenets of your Cause/Divinity."

Lawful Neutral God of Law aside; what divine pantheons are actually peopled with such boring caricatures?  Why do we have to look at Zeus and wonder what his alignment is, when any non-cursory reading of Greek mythology shows he was one complicated horny bastard?

You're saying here that you barely play with it, you don't mandate it, that's great.  I was there once too.  Why not take that next step, ask "What does it really add?  Why do I put up with players making lame decisions based on it?", and just chuck it?  If the game mechanic adds no value, why keep it?

[Mephansteras]

The only reason I kept it at all, really, was because there are game mechanics that use it. What good is Detect Evil if you never define what Evil is?

And I agree with what you're saying. My gods tended to be more complicated than simply being Lawful Good.

For instance, one of the major gods that my games dealt with was Avos, the Lomonthian god of the Sun, War, and Men. Technically, he was Neutral Good, but obviously it got a lot more complicated than that. His paladins were part of his War Aspect, and thus had rules that specifically dealt with war. His priests dealt more with Fire and his attributes as the 'Perfect Man', so they handled issues like the proper duties of a Husband, Father, Son, Brother, etc.

I can stick him in a bucket, but the bucket was hardly a perfect reflection of what the religion viewed him as. In fact, his Paladins specifically split away from the aspects of Family by not having any of their own. If you looked at their vows and views, they aligned more with Lawful Neutral than Neutral Good, even though that's not the Alignment you'd give the god.

Ultimately, I used alignment as a rough guideline and something to help new players. My veteran players rarely concerned themselves with alignment beyond what mattered for specific game mechanics. New players, though, I find really need something to latch on to and an Alignment gives them something to use to help define their character. I never, though, restrict them from doing something just because of their alignment. I will, though, use the alignment they picked as a way to help them define and refine their character. Saying "You have your character listed as Neutral Good, but this action goes against that. Is this really what you want them to do? Why? What makes it ok for them to do that?" is a good tool to help someone develop their character and even stay in character. If they still want to do the evil action, maybe they have a good reason. Or maybe the character's alignment is shifting over time. Both of which are fine and can make for great roleplaying moments.

It's not a bad system, really, but like you said it's 'role-playing training wheels'. Useful when you start, but eventually they just get in the way.

[Sensei]

So, I haven't been able to find anything, but do they have an approx. release date for Next? I'm pondering running a game again, but don't really want to pick up some new books if the new version is going to be out soon.

Did you see the link in the OP? You can get a test version of DnD Next right now! Which might justify calling it DnD Present, but whatever, marketing.

Can you actually Gen a character right now? I remeber checking on this earlier in the year, and you just got character presets. And I know for a fact that anyone I'd want to play with would stick their nose up at pre-genned characters.

yeah, the materials have been updated considerably. You can indeed gen a character right now. Its not totally done but all the core elements of classes, skills and feats are there.

Also, neonivek's DM was a dickmunch.

[symonthewise]

4e looked cool but something about the powers bothered me a bit. Just the feel of it bugged me, it did seem easier to play than 3.5. In that sense I'm excited about the expertise dice and what not they've moved onto with the new system.

But jesus why dnd "next"? what vapid, depressing corporate lingo.. Does that make anyone else a little pukey or am I alone on this?

[Neonivek]

4e looked cool but something about the powers bothered me a bit. Just the feel of it bugged me, it did seem easier to play than 3.5. In that sense I'm excited about the expertise dice and what not they've moved onto with the new system.

But jesus why dnd "next"? what vapid, depressing corporate lingo.. Does that make anyone else a little pukey or am I alone on this?

How about the fact that many of the powers SHOULDN'T Work.

The Bard for example can hurt people with an insult... and outright kill them. Even if they are deaf and are otherwise mindless.

Honestly I always thought that they should have made DND4e into a tactics game. It probably is the edition of dungeons and dragons that could do that best.

There are a hand full of things we got from 4e that I consider genuin improvements to the game.
1) Swarm subtype weakening (Dear holy if there is any subtype that is never accurate to their CR unintentionally it is swarms)
2) Just how the game kept going. Anyone who played 3.5 knows that games can be put to a screetching halt because a battle went badly.
3) Giving NON-Mages non-magic classes things to do in combat against non-humanoid enemies other then "I attack".

Now I don't care too much about the first... and I happen to know the second is in the game... But the Third BETTER be in the game. I want to play "Not the mage"

[ductape]

That is how allignments are generally supposed to be played Eharper256. They are supposed to be rules of thumb on your characters beliefs that they can call to when they want to know how to act in a situation.

Their railroading comes from earlier editions where you were actually bolted down to the allignment. Something they have been trying to fix ever since.

yeah kinda, except in early editions of D&D it was always explicit to use what rules suited you and chuck or modify the rest. That has long been the sentiment in the old school. MOst of the time, players didnt even have any idea what the rules were anyway, the counted on the DM to help them with that boring stuff. Somewhere down the road, players got wise and started throwing rules at the DMs, this is a sad type of campaign in my opinion and not something I ever wanted to play.

meh, to each their own I suppose.