Lanir wrote:
This is what I was refering to as world building in my original reply. Only by defining some elements like this do you get a specific result about morality for life stealing as I mentioned earlier. So I think we're agreeing with each other again?
Well, yes. If you're saying the DM needs to flesh out the guidelines in the books. Most of the alignment stuff is obvious, but the nitty-gritty sometimes needs to be detailed by the DM.
As far as the discussions of alignment go... You guys are talking about how it works in the book. I'm aware of the explanations. You're also extrapolating in ways that make sense to me in applying it to newer situations like the really odious schtick of the paladin "going to check the horses" at convenient times. But while alignment is a social mechanic it is still a game mechanic. And there are reasons why it doesn't work very well.
1. People in real life want to see themselves as the hero in their own story. Or at least as generally good people.
Unless of course the player wishes to play a greedy thief and explore playing a person who isn't necessarily the hero, and who can get away with murder (literally sometimes), or perhaps play a druid who is above the petty concerns of the world of politics and wealth.
2. PC morality is not entirely unrelated to the morality of the player and can be identical at times.
Or, conversely, it can be absolutely opposite. That's the fun of a roleplaying game. The player can play a holy paladin, an aloof druid, a conniving thief, etc.
3. Fiction presents lots of antiheroes who are allowed to be the "good guys" in their own stories. The entire story is usually setup to allow the justifications for their actions to be presented in as favorable a light as possible.
I'd say they can be fit into the alignment system just fine. Many would be CG or perhaps NG.
4. Considerable effort has been expended in the recent past to make torture look like it might possibly be reasonable in the real world.
Torture in the real world is totally reasonable. While there are
usually other, better ways to extract information, torture definitely has a place. There are situations where time is of the essence and there is simply not time for slower methods. Marcinko, who formed Seal Team 6, also holds this stance on the issue. And believe me, there are times he's had to do it and it works.
5. Demonizing opponents so that you can do anything to them is a popular tactic.
Yes, that's an age-old tactic. Dehumanize the enemy to make it easier to kill him (hence, the terms "Japs", "Nips", and "Krauts" in WWII). But that doesn't mean you can "do anything" to them. American soldiers were prohibited from torturing the enemy even though they saw them in dehumanized terms.
Put all these together and you have a culture that encourages excuses, people that are probably expecting those excuses to pass muster in your games, and who will be unpredictably insulted that you're criticizing their real world morality.
Yes, a culture of shitty players. Period. Shitty players cause shitty games. They suck. And they don't sit at my table. It's that simple. You're trying to blame alignment for shitty players when it has nothing to do with alignment. If you find good players, this will never be an issue.
There's even a really strong history of #5 in D&D. For example in B2 Keep on the Borderlands the PCs end up fighting orcs and goblins because caravans have been raided nearby. Do the PCs go up to the caves these creatures live in and demand the goods be returned and the guilty parties handed over? Of course not. It's assumed they have their excuse and they sneak in to murderhobo their way through the homes of the monsters. Indeed, once the excuse is given it's wholly abandoned after the fact, you never run into merchants anxiously asking if their goods have been found. In some ways it sort of breaks the game if #5 is not a viable option.
Your example is wrong because you're trying to apply human-to-human morality onto human-to-monster game alignment. That doesn't work. To give a better example in real-world terms, say you have a cell of terrorists, with a few amongst them who take hostages. You don't send Seal Team 6 or Delta Force in to demand the hostages be released and for the terrorists to turn over the actual perpetrators of the kidnapping. You go in and
kill them all in cold blood, period. It's assumed that the orcs are engaged in murder. Orcs are uniformly evil in AD&D terms. They're evil, murderous creatures hated by every civilized race (because they are thoroughly evil and destructive). Similar to real world terrorists.
Just to give one example, #4 is pretty troublesome as well and directly ties into the "checking the horses" nonsense. I have a player that is not too bright and can't imagine torture beyond the perfect cinematic setup of some evil person wholly in control of the situation who is slowly put under duress that they obviously deserve until their control erodes and they admit their wrongdoings.
Underlined emphasis mine. "Not too bright" player. There's your problem. It has everything to do with shitty players and nothing to do with the alignment system.
In most other respects the guy would bend over backwards to help people but he's specifically referenced the "checking the horses" thing to me. I can tell him "I don't allow torture in my games, it's off the table." That's fine and he would understand even if he didn't agree with me. If I tell him "Torture is evil and can never be anything other than an evil act and allowing it to happen also makes you an accomplice to evil" then he doesn't see that as me enforcing a pretty basic morality in the game. He sees it as me criticizing his politics!
Why then is he still at your table causing trouble? The guy is obviously an idiot. Period. Most likely a liberal snowflake that can't handle differing opinions or anything that goes against his ill-informed world view. Get rid of him. He would not last more than a session at my table.
This is why I don't want to get into this generally. It would turn my game into a contentious series of lessons in morality.
The solution? Get better players. I've never had this problem because I'm picky when it comes to who my players are. These issues you bring up are player issues, not mechanics/game issues. And we know this from experience because shitty players suck. Good players, on the other hand, don't suck and don't cause these sorts of problems.
I'd rather have fun instead.
If that's your goal, you need to find better players.
And frankly, even D&D "good" is not good because it requires #5 or the game breaks.
That's completely false. It certainly does not require dehumanizing the enemy in order to work. Have you ever witnessed the aftermath of a police shooting or the shooting of an enemy in combat (military)? In the vast majority of cases, when the bad guy is down, the police or military steps in and renders medical attention to the wounded and still living. They don't spit on them or light them on fire or torture them. They treat them as fellow human beings. You don't need to dehumanize an enemy to kill him. I do security work, and if an active shooter enters the area, I have to kill him. I go into the situation knowing that the shooter is a fellow human being who simply stopped being able to cope with life and is almost certainly on mind-altering anti-depressants (many of which cause suicidal/homicidal thoughts). He's not a monster. He may be a 15 year old kid who's messed up. But if I'm on the scene, he's getting multiple head wounds and the event is over. Sucks to be him. Sucks to be me. Oh well. I'll actually feel for him and be very sad the situation had to happen. That doesn't mean I have to dehumanize him to be the good guy. But yes, I need to be the good guy and shoot the bad guy who's trying to kill everyone there.
Now in AD&D it's a bit easier because, for example, orcs are vile, hateful, thoroughly evil inhuman monsters that constitute an ongoing threat by their very existence. But a paladin, for example, will not allow the murder of disarmed evil beings or children regardless of the situation.
It fails it's own morality checks, has for decades, and is seriously into "neutral" territory.
Only in a poorly run, poorly played game.
But like my players it would still rather call itself "good", thank you very much. Do you see how even the game designers fell into this issue of wanting to label themselves as good while abandoning the moral high ground to accept convenient excuses instead?
Sorry, that's simply not true at all. Not at all. A paladin will not condone torture. Neither will a good cleric. I think you have an issue with alignment. It's not a design flaw. I'm not trying to pick on you, but whenever I see someone so thoroughly at odds with such a major aspect of the game it always turns out to be an issue with the person, not the game.
Any game mechanic that causes this much trouble is worth chucking out the window.
It only causes problems with bad players and/or DMs. The alignment system is not broken by any means. It's one of the best designed mechanics in the game, actually.
I used some extreme examples from past groups earlier but my current group is mostly pretty decent, yet we'd still have disagreements over strict enforcement of alignments.
Two words. Better players. It really is that simple.
Alignment is just a fake way of modeling these things to begin with. A heavy-handed "the universe itself passes judgement on you" mess that isn't even consistent across games.
It's not the universe passing judgement on the PCs. It's the gods. See what I mean? You're blaming the wrong thing. You're looking at it wrong.
My solution is to remove the mechanic and go entirely with social responses to actions. You might want to argue with me about this but really. Doesn't that just reinforce this point?
I have no idea whatsoever what you mean by "go entirely with social responses to actions". That doesn't tell me anything. Do you mean like the Antifa and Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists who assault innocent people and riot and commit vandalism and arson because they so deeply hate those awful, evil, Nazi-like Americans (conservatives, Trump supporters, etc)? Because they all think they're "good" and yet their "social responses" are thoroughly evil. They have no morals, no alignment guidelines. They're essentially Chaotic Evil. They don't respect democracy. So putting this into game terms, they are not and cannot be (objectively speaking) of good alignment. "Social responses" are going to align with one of the alignments in AD&D. Villagers whose "social response" to an unpopular king (who perhaps demands high taxes or whatever) is to protest, refuse payment, and fight for their rights are Chaotic Good. Should those same villagers have a "social response" similar to that of our current domestic terrorist groups, and they start burning their neighbors' homes and businesses to the ground, assaulting those in the village who actually like the king (perhaps they know he needs to charge high taxes to pay for defense of the kingdom), and generally cause damage and bloodshed, that "social response" would see them labeled Chaotic Evil.
Social responses, if I understand them to mean what I think you intend them to mean, would be assigned to whatever alignment they match. So that can't be a substitute for alignment. Social responses will determine alignment. You can't separate the two.