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@Damnationization
3 жыл бұрын
I've been around D&D since before I could read and back to basic and 1st edition. The issue with alignment is it's all personal. You and I both might agree on a lot of morale/ideas, just like friends and so on. But we all have slight differences. Such as is it ever right to kill another person even in self defense? is it alright to steal if you need the money for another and what are the exact reasons? Many other such questions define who we are and what we think of other people. I see this as alignment. A evil person can still do good and good people can still do evil. It's all depending on the context of the situation and the individual. But alignment is more a broader view of this idea and concept.
@brettmajeske3525
3 жыл бұрын
I think the problem with your expressed solution is that it ignores neutrality. In D&D alignment is not a binary. If Goodness is about how much self sacrifice one is willing to accept to help others, and Evil is how much pain one is willing to inflict for personal gratification, then neutrality is self defense; balancing benefit and harm. A Neutral will sacrifice for a friend, or hurt a foe to protect themselves. Goodness then would be self-sacrifice for strangers and Evil would be hurting non-enemies for personal gain.
@Damnationization
3 жыл бұрын
@@brettmajeske3525 I disagree. In your concept of goodness it's, "self-sacrifice for strangers." Kamikaze pilots are this. Solders may be this. But what if you are the child who lost his father or mother to this person or a family member. Is that person still a good person?
@brettmajeske3525
3 жыл бұрын
@@Damnationization Your speaking of relative morality, which is not a part of the D&D Alignment system.
@kerwinbrown4180
3 жыл бұрын
@@brettmajeske3525 Neutral has always been a conundrum as there are multiple ways to be neutral. It is generaly regarded as ballance. Moderation is another way of looking at it.
@catarinabarbosa2247
3 жыл бұрын
setting up taking the hobits to isengard in the intro of the video and then chekov's gunning it as the outro music was top tier
@AD_Gray
3 жыл бұрын
I really like the way you distinguish between WHY a character would do something (GOOD/EVIL) and HOW a character would act (LAW/CHAOS). That's really helpful for explaining the--often nebulous and confusing--concept of alignment to new players and redefining it for anyone who's unsure. I think defining neutrality is much more difficult though and it's one I often struggle with. Do you have any thoughts on where Neutral characters sit within your view? Wonderful video as always Bob :)
@Patches2212
3 жыл бұрын
For the Neutral alignment characters, (specifically the four "poles", aka NG, LN, CN and NE), you can see the "extreme" versions of their non-neutral part. For NG and NE characters, they do not care about _how_ they do something (aka the L vs C axis), as to them the _why_ is much more important than the how. An example here would be Robin Hood. Though he has a strong moral code and honour that is part of his actions (Lawful), he does not let it stand in his way of helping others, and will often do "what ever it takes" to help those in need (Chaos). To him, he is define by his need to help others even at his own detriment, while his methods aren't as essential to him. Conversely we have Voldemort to represent NE. To him, nothing is more important than his own growth in power and importance, even at the detriment of everyone else (Evil). He does have some semblance of a moral/code of "reason" to him (aka in that he believes power belongs rightfully to those who earned it by blood/bloodline), but he doesn't let it stop him from doing what he must to benefit himself (he also, however, doesn't go full chaotic with his methods, and let's his warped "moral compass" guide his actions towards his true aim) In contrast, LN and CN characters care more about the _how_ they do something than the _why_. An example of an LN character would be a hardened mercenary or Samurai/Ronin warrior. They don't care about whether their actions hurt or aid other people, or detriment/benefit themselves, they primarily care about their moral/work ethic code. A code-bound Samurai or Ronin would just as easily burn down a village as they would help rebuild one, as long as when they do so, they do so because of and through their code of honour. In contrast, a CN character cares more about doing whatever needs to be done to get something done. An example of someone like this is any number of trickster or party gods throughout mythology. To take Bacchus/Dionysus as an example- he was a party god whose main goal was to spread wine, merriment and mania throughout the world, no matter what he needed to do to do so. He brought joy and helped a lot of people throughout the myths he's referenced in, but also had no qualms with literally having a mother and sister tear their king and son/brother limb from limb because he was trying to stop the merriment of women. He had no concerns if people got hurt or benefited, nor did he care for his own betterment/detriment, he just cared for having/spreading fun through whatever means necessary (which is why I feel many "CN characters" who are just CN so they can "do what they want" are played wrong, since CN is more about the doing than the wanting) True Neutral is an interesting anomaly, since initially, they don't appear to care about the Hows or the Whys of their actions. However, to them, the most important reason behind why _and_ how they do something is balance. Is the party constantly redistributing wealth and food into regions known for being impoverished (aka being Good) but potentially leading to an imbalance in resources and "tipping of the scales" in a particular direction? A True Neutral character might just go steal back some of that money food to make sure not everyone will survive/be as well off (aka an Evil act). Is the party going full rogue vigilante, doing everything they can do to get a job done (aka Chaotic). A True Neutral character would speak up and actually be a voice of reason/logic, to try and balance out the chaotic nature of the party with a moral compass/code of honour (Lawful). Both these situations can happen in both directions, as a True Neutral character is always trying to bring a balance to the how's and the why's of those around them. They're not "doing the opposite" of what everyone else does, merely making sure that their actions lead to a balance in the nature of the world around them, rather than too much L/C or G/E
@AD_Gray
3 жыл бұрын
@@Patches2212 I couldn't have asked for a more comprehensive or detailed analysis. Thank you so much!
@Septimus_ii
3 жыл бұрын
@@Patches2212 that's really helpful. Thinking about the alignment chart as a circle instead of a square demonstrated that CN is even more chaotic than CG or CE, for example. Your approach to true neutral is the opposite to what I've understood. I've thought of true neutral as not having strong personal convictions and thus being easily swayed by the party. Your way works well too - the true neutral character is a counterbalance to whichever way the party is going.
@BigCowProductions
3 жыл бұрын
I agreen that was on point.
@ricardo.sander
3 жыл бұрын
@@Patches2212 I really like your explanation but I always have a hard time trying to understand the difference/cross line between neural and chaotic. Some good would do things to the sake of others. But someone who do things just for himself is evil or neutral? An evil character would do things to hurt others just for fun or because it benefits him? Or would it be neutral too? A lawful character would follow the law but If someone neutral break the law when needed it means someone chaotic would break the law just for breaking it? To me is unclear what means breaking the law for a chaotic or neutral alignment.
@DUNGEONCRAFT1
3 жыл бұрын
Great topic! I'm reading the "Faithful Executioner" by Harrington. It's about a technically Lawful Good executioner prays every day and goes to church every Sunday, but whose job requires him to hang, behead, and strangle people for a living. Fascinating read.
@FrostSpike
3 жыл бұрын
Yes, killing people that have acted against society in a way that society have deemed unacceptable to the extent that need to be killed. As long as it's done "humanely" (and what that means is a decision of society too, of course) then he's Lawful Good. It'd be more difficult to justify a LG torturer I think, but it's the good of the society over the rights of the few, so it could be done if you look at it the right way. Easy to see how a society can slip into barbaric behaviour and it being completely acceptable to the masses.
@FrostSpike
3 жыл бұрын
@asiscoe In my games I use an external absolute perspective (the world's Overgod's i.e. mine) to judge these things against... and that's what a character's alignment is judged against. The players have a list of these and how the points that various acts contribute to the two axes of Law/Chaos, Good/Evil. The Gods themselves are caricatures of their alignments and, where that have direct dominion/control over their followers (much like Lolth does for the vast majority of the drow) they can drive that alignment behaviour into the society simply because of a push-down reward/punishment system. In the case of the sacrifice - it probably would be a "Good" thing from the society's perspective as it would mean that Lolth was far less likely to send her minions on an rampage through the city and killing many citizens than if they'd insulted her by not making a sacrifice. She might even grant them some benefices. They might need to up their game though - a slave means nothing to Lolth, she'd want a powerful, captured adversary or, better, a powerful member of her faithful wanting to make that final devotion - at least in their mortal form. (From my - i.e. the in-game Overgod's perspective, that would be a Lawful Evil act - it's organised and planned, aligned to the strictures of society, and also taking the life of an "innocent".)
@Dyrnwyn
3 жыл бұрын
@@FrostSpike By LG "torturers," I assume you mean someone like an inquisitor. They never went straight to the thumb screws. They used all manner of soft techniques to get a confession first. Anyway, the way alignment translates into action is so dependent on the cultural setting. A LG inquisitor might be praying until he sweats every night for the person to see the light and make a confession. By the time he resorted to physical brutality, he would be convinced that any good soul would have confessed by then, therefore he must be dealing with someone wicked, who God will punish anyway.
@adrianwebster6923
3 жыл бұрын
Hey Professor, if you enjoy that you can get the actual journal of the subject of that book, A Hangman's Diary.
@VMSelvaggio
3 жыл бұрын
Bookmarked! Thank you Professor Dungeon Master, you always seem to be reading something that I'd like to grab and take look at. I am about half-way through the Medieval Underworld, which you had also recommended in one of your videos!
@Doughy_in_the_Middle
3 жыл бұрын
I hadn't played the game since The Dark Times in the early 90s. When 5e came along, I watched Critical Role, got a PHB, and started watching D&D KZitemrs. While he's no longer active, Guildmaster Dan's "Alignments Done Right" was a favorite. It cemented Selfish/Selfless and Principled/Unprincipled for me and I've since passed it on to every new table I've ran. Yours is definitely more succinct however. Good stuff.
@AbandonedVoid
3 жыл бұрын
I use Altruism/Egoism and Principlism/Consequentialism in place of Good/Evil and Law/Chaos.
@TheNekofanatic
2 жыл бұрын
@@AbandonedVoid Altruism/Egoism... that's an interesting idea I feel I'll need to explore more.
@musingartisan
3 жыл бұрын
When discussing Alignments in D'n'D, there is one thing you need to do. That is to divorce yourself from the notion of "what is good to one person is evil to another". Although that is true for real life, we are here discussing a universe where Gods and Demons do exist, fact. And that physical realms made up of physical manifestations of the alignments exist. Mortals have access to spells like Detect Good and Protection from Evil. Therefore there is a very real, and clearly defined list of what is Good, Evil, Lawful and Chaotic. It is up to the DM to define what those lists are within their campaign, hopefully with feedback from the players.
@TheGiantRobot
3 жыл бұрын
Excellent point! I hadn't quite thought of it that way.
@BobWorldBuilder
3 жыл бұрын
That's a really interesting point!
@beatleblev
3 жыл бұрын
This is why alignment is still important and you can't just do away with it without removing quite a few spells or at least changing the way they work. The hard part is deciding where ethically/morally grey characters land. James Bond and Boba Fett are definitely Lawful but fall somewhere between Neutral and Evil. Is assassination for the Kingdom morally different than killing for cold hard cash? Moorcock's Elric is listed as Chaotic Evil in 1st ed. Deities and Demigods, but is he, or is he processed by Blackraz..er Stormbringer? How about the other wielder of "Blackrazor", Turin Turambar from Tolkien's Silmarillion? Gurthang bears the malice of its maker, Eol (NE?). How much does the blade influence Turin's impulsive and rash behavior? At what point do these heroes radiate evil that can be detected by a Detect Evil spell?
@TonkarzOfSolSystem
3 жыл бұрын
@@beatleblev It's really not very complicated. "Good" aligned characters fight to protect the weak, "Evil" aligned characters exploit the weak. To quote the 3.5 SRD: >Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life, whether for fun or profit. >"Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others. >"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master. So Boba Fett is evil, James Bond is good (depending on the movie).
@dagonming1319
3 жыл бұрын
thanks. you just wrote what I was going too. IT IS A WORLD OF GODS. . actions the players take in the game should be the same as their god / demon. it is not the same as the real world where a person SAY that they are lawful good but commit acts of torture while claiming that they believe in this world's "god".
@DeltaDemon1
3 жыл бұрын
It's simple...Don't be a slave to any rule, including alignment. Alignment is just a guideline as to a character's personality. It is the start of roleplaying, not the end. The specific character traits will be fleshed out, some, maybe even most, to be decided or guided based on the character's alignment. Alignment should have little mechanical influence on the game but behavior should have in game effects as opposed to mechanical effects. If your character is lawful good and commits several bloody murders, the repercussions might be the law officials hunting you down, not the loss of a level (or any other mechanical game effect.
@liamcage7208
Жыл бұрын
I agree 100%.
@TheOnlyTherazan
Жыл бұрын
Not to mention, acting out of character, or rather, relatively out of alignment, behavior can indicates something wrong with your character, or just a change of perspective within the game. Maybe after failing to save a loved one, the usually honorable warrior fights brutally dirty to avoid being bogged down in combat again, at least until his issues are addressed. Or the aloof CN rogue actually participate in a group activity and join the card game without trying to cheat them, after nearly dying and being saved by her teammates.
@johnathanmonsen6567
Жыл бұрын
Also that would probably result in their alignment no longer being lawful good.
@kianpritchett8489
3 жыл бұрын
One of the coolest modules from 1e ad&d is Treasure Hunt for that exact reason! You don't have an alignment or class at the start, but as the module unfolds and the characters make choices, their alignment and class becomes more clear!
@RobertWF42
3 жыл бұрын
Keep in mind Gary Gygax wrote those thoughts about execution by beheading and strangulation in the 70s or early 80s, it was a different time. On a typical day there were at least 5 heads on pikes on display at my shopping mall when I was a kid. ;-)
@TheGiantRobot
3 жыл бұрын
And we liked it that way.
@BobWorldBuilder
3 жыл бұрын
hahah oh how times have changed!
@davidhoracek6758
Жыл бұрын
No, he wrote them about a medieval fantasy setting. Why is this confusing?
@sumthinorother9615
Жыл бұрын
@@davidhoracek6758 Because medieval execution is very consistently cruel and unusual? I struggle to imagine a case where it should be considered “good” to use a breaking wheel execution. In our world, executions were always scare tactics; a DnD execution is sort of due process. The gods will judge them for what they did. It’s confusing because it’s so totally incongruous with modern society, and basic understandings of morality. The joke is to imagine if this was “Lawful Good” practice when Gygax wrote the book.
@cyclone8974
Жыл бұрын
It was an interview from 2005.
@QophSilrahq
3 жыл бұрын
I began playing with AD&D 2nd Edition Revised, and I recall somewhere in the book that it said exactly this. That you begin as the alignment you choose, but during the course of the game, your alignment can change based on your actions. Also that religious characters can temporarily lose their god-given powers if they do not adhere to the correct alignment for their deity.
@TheMightyBattleSquid
2 ай бұрын
There was a lot of that in old dnd. Like you could lose your RANGER abilities if you commited too many unlawful acts or forget how to lockpick if you did too many good acts (I guess locksmiths just don't exist in dnd)
@QophSilrahq
2 ай бұрын
@@TheMightyBattleSquid It makes enough sense for rangers, but forgetting how to lock-pick makes no sense. I don't recall that being in the book. Picking locks is in no way magical. Unless you're using a sentient lock-pick set that refuses to pick locks for lawful wielders.
@docmnc8010
3 жыл бұрын
Definitely some good points though I personally use alignment as denoting a players relationship to the gods and which afterlife they'll end up in. So i'll update my track of a players alignment as the campaign goes on and what they write on their sheet is treated as an out of character statement of intent.
@AD_Gray
3 жыл бұрын
I like that! It's a great way of showing actions have consequences too
@Madhattersinjeans
3 жыл бұрын
That's pretty smart. It's a way to encourate players to invest themselves in a certain kind of afterlife. Bringing the fairly abstract notions of alignment into some kind of solid real world consequences.
@digitaljanus
3 жыл бұрын
I remember in 1st and 2nd ed. AD&D the use of poison was always considered an evil act--and bear in mind in those editions, poison was almost always of the "save or die instantly" variety. Which I think was either some 1970s pop-history understanding of medieval chivalry on the part of the designers, or to maintain a level of challenge in the game (it's not super fun if PCs are one-shotting half the monsters they fight), or both. But they never really explained why killing an ogre relatively quickly and painlessly with poison was evil while carving it up like a Christmas turkey over the course of half a dozen combat rounds was good. It's that kind of inconsistent nonsense that led me to ignore alignment early on.
@chrisflanagan7564
3 жыл бұрын
The use of poison is an evil act, because to use poison one must have murder in one's heart. During a fight with the ogre there is a chance, no matter how slight, that the ogres says "wait, stop! I surrender! I'm only raiding the town because the necromancer has my daughter!" If you poison the villain you cut short the possibility of redemption. Poison is indiscriminate. If you poison the irredeemably evil wizard's food, and he happens to feed a small portion of his food to an innocent hostage, then you are responsible for that death... That willingness to allow collateral damage, moves you a tick towards evil.
@CondemnedGuy
3 жыл бұрын
@@chrisflanagan7564 That also means destructive magic is evil.
@chrisflanagan7564
3 жыл бұрын
@@CondemnedGuy sure, lots of spells were considered evil. 3e and 3.5 even tagged them as such. Contagion creates diseases, marked as evil. Doesn't have a good or neutral use. Disintegrate... not evil, merely destructive, but could be used to dig a well to get water for a town... the fact that it destroys matter and can be used to destroy a person, doesn't make it interactly evil the way poison use, or creating undead, or some torturous spell would be. Now, many poisons in tiny doses can be medicinal, which is probably why they can be found in apothecaries stores. "Yes I have oil of blark, put one measure in one pint of water, and give the patient one teaspoon of it each day after breakfast to keep their fever down. Here this vial should help 5 patients for a week or so... Certainly don't smear the whole vial onto your knife and stab the king."
@CondemnedGuy
3 жыл бұрын
@@chrisflanagan7564 And this is why saying using poison is evil is a bit silly. Poisons can be used as medicine, or for destroying vermins etc. They aren't inherently evil, but using them recklessly is.
@chrisflanagan7564
3 жыл бұрын
@@CondemnedGuy ah that is why having the chemical itself isn't evil, but using them is.
@elfbait3774
3 жыл бұрын
Back in our AD&D days and to some degree in our current games, I don't even ask that my players choose an alignment up front. Alignment is generally set in stone at 3rd-level, after the players have had a chance to break their characters in.
@aprinnyonbreak1290
3 жыл бұрын
Agree, I don't really hold any players to RP details about their character for a few sessions. Let then break the character in, and find out how to best marry their concept, with their ability to execute, with the campaign context.
@edwardyoung8241
Жыл бұрын
Almost exactly what I do with the classes that don't require a certain alignment, although I use 5th level, but that's an unimportant difference. I generally tell them what I think their alignment is around 4th level, and then if they really don't want to be that alignment for some reason, then they have a chance to 'straighten out' before they get into potentially losing a level or atonement zone.
@michaelcarey7173
3 жыл бұрын
Great video! Your take on alignment is very similar to mine. The best explanation I've read was in an old Polyhedron magazine where the lawful-chaotic axis was your means and the good-evil axis was your motivation. Also, in the alignment section of the 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide, Gygax calls out that good and evil are subjective and it is up to the DM to explain what they mean in their campaign. I also think that alignment is not prescriptive but descriptive. You act a certain way most of the time, but one action can neither damn nor redeem you.
@Joshuazx
3 жыл бұрын
Hey Bob, my thoughts on your arguments: There's a concept called the law of retaliation, "eye for an eye," which reasons that you may not seek retaliation in excess of the original transgression. That is fair and sound. There's another concept of thought crime that a person is not guilty of a crime they're thinking about committing. If you kill someone because you believe they want to kill you, you may have taken the life of someone who wouldn't. Punishing someone for a thought crime is in violation of the law of retaliation. Conspiracies need evidence to justify punishment. Self defense laws do not come into effect when you start the fight. These ideas are how lawful people would act in a low culture setting such as what would be found in a period fantasy setting.
@Dyrnwyn
3 жыл бұрын
Exactly this. D&D under Gygax made much more of an effort to simulate a medieval European setting. Life was rough. What we would consider petty criminals today had a lot more power to disrupt the local economy back then, and generally terrorize a population. It's all so easy to cringe at "an eye for an eye" today as we sit back in temperature controlled environments with a Starbucks iced frapuccino in one hand and a PhD in Intercultural Sensitivity in the other, and having no understanding of the nuance or cultural context of it. Now in 5e the implied setting is a bright and happy place where warforged robots and elves and dragonborn and half-god aasimar all hold hands and sing and dance together, and no one can disturb the peace except for one BBEG every now and then, who .... must be killed... right? Hmm.
@digitaljanus
3 жыл бұрын
"Thought crime" takes on a whole different meaning when many individuals in the world have the ability to literally read thoughts. Or just look at another individual and know their alignment. Does the existence of such powers change the criteria for acceptable evidence in your campaign setting or do legal courts not accept such testimony? I'm not saying there's a right or wrong answer, just that it's something to think about in a fantasy setting that resembles our real-world pre-industrial history, but usually includes things like magic and monsters that our ancestors never really had to contend with (even if they believed it was a possibility).
@Joshuazx
3 жыл бұрын
@@digitaljanus the claim that you used mind reading carries a burden of proof and may be treated as an admission that you violated another's privacy. Any liar can say they read someone's mind outside of a zone of truth which may not be an option.
@Joshuazx
3 жыл бұрын
@@Dyrnwyn yes. Also, people didn't have a right to representation or an expedient trial. In some places, your representation might share in your punishment if you're found guilty. Period laws might have been strange or harsh, but the mentality is that law is just and must be obeyed.
@CondemnedGuy
3 жыл бұрын
There's a reason why "eye for an eye makes the world blind" is a well known saying. Revenge isn't good, fair, or just. It is something that makes people feel like justice has been served, but it rarely results in more good in the world.
@X.Q.Jonah-
9 ай бұрын
Gary’s analysis of “eye for an eye” is correct. It’s unusual that you would use a record scratch effect and act surprised by this, as most people agree with it and you’re the outlier, not him.
@___i3ambi126
3 жыл бұрын
My favorite application of alignments is how it denotes what outer plane they would be most comfortable in. So a chaotic evil character would be one that looks at the abyss and thinks: A dark chaotic place, out of reach from good gods, where everyone is constantly lost and on the cusp of death?... F*** yeah, easy murder with no concequences. Lets go~
@TheClericCorner
3 жыл бұрын
I often look at it as 'lawful selfless' to 'chaotic selfish' instead of good vs evil
@johnathanmonsen6567
Жыл бұрын
But that is good and evil? Like people keep trying to make good and evil out to be some arbitrary bullcrap but it's literally selfless or selfish.
@MakenaForest
Жыл бұрын
@@johnathanmonsen6567 and yet some of the greatest deeds can be selfish. your description decries other descriptions for being arbitrary then applies arbitrary terms to good and evil.
@johnathanmonsen6567
Жыл бұрын
@@MakenaForestThere's nothing arbitrary about selflessness or selfishness. Selfishness is unsustainable -- it relies on the selflessness of others sometimes even more than the selfless option. You say that the "greatest" deeds can be selfish, but how are they "great" if they were never intended to help anybody? Selfishness doesn't motivate great deeds, it motivates shortcuts. If it did motivate great deeds, we'd have solved a lot of the problems in our society already. But instead, the problems are perpetuated because it gives short-term benefits to the people in power.
@leonfire99
Жыл бұрын
i see true neutral as the most selfish alginment. evil will go out of their way or inconvenience themselves to spite someone and good will do the same to help someone. then lawful will do the same to uphold ethics and chaotic will do the same to sow discord. true neutral is the only one aligned purely to themselves and no greater ethic so they are the most selfish.
@magoschonkers711
Жыл бұрын
That is very in line with good and evil in the AD&D DMG,
@am0ebab0y
3 жыл бұрын
I've also wondered if alignment is also a bit more of a remnant of the less backstory more disposal characters.
@justineberlein5916
2 жыл бұрын
I don't think it's necessarily a remnant of that, but as a PF player, I do think it feels tacked on in 5e, when not even Protection from *Good and Evil* has any alignment-based effects
@Huntanor
2 жыл бұрын
I don't understand this idea that the old games were about throw away characters. That's crazy, no one I played with in late adnd and 2nd Ed considered their characters throw away, and over engagement and character grief was a huge topic of discussion during those eras. The bad superdeadly rules were that way because earlier writers of the game were vets and military game players who believed in trauma bonding as if it was a good thing. They wanted you to love your character be traumatized by their death and love your new character through that. It's a terrible idea but the vast majorityof players and writer for games I spoke to I the 90s fought against those ideas in there games with house rules.
@MonkeyJedi99
3 жыл бұрын
And the whole alignment chart has to be filtered through the lens of keeping a harmonious table. If Jane's character stabs Phil's character in his sleep and says, "But my character is chaotic!" you may lose that harmonious table. If Jane's character stabs Phil's character in his sleep because Phil's character sold Jane's character's mother into slavery ten years ago and it was only found out now... the table may still recover harmony.
@brucetucker4847
3 жыл бұрын
Chaotic doesn't mean doing anything randomly at any time for no reason. In terms of personal ethics, it means how much external influence and control you permit over your actions. Lawful means you obey the law because it's the law, whether it's a good or bad law is only relevant in extreme cases. Chaotic means you do what you think best regardless of what society dictates. What it is that you think is best is more a matter of good and evil. A chaotic good character will still be a good Samaritan, but because that character thinks it's the right thing to do, not because some religion or law dictates that course of action. And even a chaotic evil character will generally stand by their friends unless they have a really compelling reason not to, because they're intelligent enough to understand that having friends who've got their back greatly increases their chances of survival. Keeping a harmonious table is also a good thing, but it's more meta. Sometimes you do things that your character might not do just because it makes for a better game experience for all the players. As a GM I would never penalize players for doing that even if it is not necessarily in line with their characters' personality or alignment.
@Greywander87
3 жыл бұрын
This is how you can make Chaotic Evil work in an otherwise Good party. The CE character is still loyal to the party, and mostly behaves, _but_ it gives the _players_ an excuse to just cut loose and murder everyone. The _characters_ may get angry at the CE character, but for the players, it was a move that they agreed on together OOC. The drama and tension between characters can make for some fun RP and provide opportunities for character development. Having a character who's willing to do what the LG types won't can also be a valuable asset to the party when you have to get your hands dirty.
@minutemansam1214
3 жыл бұрын
@@brucetucker4847 This is why I would prefer they change the term from Lawful to Orderly. Lawful is not the opposite of Chaotic, and based on how I understand DND alignment a Lawful Good character would break the law if the law itself was evil (like if the law allowed for slavery). Orderly seems a much more appropriate term, since it would denote a character that believes in a structured, orderly system and does their best to fit within that system as opposed to a chaotic character who doesn't care for a structured, orderly system and may actively go against social standards.
@floramew
3 жыл бұрын
Self defense is less about "helping yourself" and more about "not letting yourself get hurt". Purely utilitarian, it's hurting someone/thing else a little more so that you can continue to do good in the future, and maybe limiting the harm the aggressor can do in the future if your actions of self defense get them caught. So, imo, it still fits into your alignment as at _least_ neutral
@williambrennan1658
3 жыл бұрын
It's that deep. If someone puts your life in danger you either let them kill your or you defend your self. There is nothing morale about not letting your self get killed. Helping someone else on the other hand would be
@chrisrudolf9839
3 жыл бұрын
@@williambrennan1658 There is something moral in it if you put the aspects of responsibility for the danger and necessity of the killing into it (which most modern justice systems do). If someone attacks you for unknown reasons or because he is a bad guy who attacks you for selfish reasons, defending yourself is a neutral act (possibly even a good one if you ALSO fight back because you assume the attacker is a generally dangerous criminal who should be stopped) If someone attacks you because you committed a selfish act before that gave him a good reason to attack you (like e.g. you just broke into his house or attacked his friend), then killing your attacker is on your conscience as well, at least if you anticipated that your action would lead to combat. If you didn't intend to get into a fight (like e.g. when trying to sneakily break in and being surprised by a guard), defending yourself by lethal force as a last resort might not be evil, but the good thing to do would be trying to save yourself without killing by whatever means possible (e.g. by running away, deceiving, negotiating, incapacitating). If someone attacks you without you being directly responsible for the conflict, but you recognize he is not doing it for evil reasons (e.g. there is a misunderstanding or he is an insane person not in control of himself or he is being mindcontrolled), defending yourself would still be a neutral act, but the good thing to do again would be trying to avert the danger without killing the attacker.
@Wise_That
3 жыл бұрын
In most legal systems, you have an obligation to use the minimum force needed to defend yourself. If you CAN tie up, scare off, or non-lethally-disable your attacker you should. Going beyond that minimum force needed is certainly less "good" than attempting to de-escalate at every opportunity.
@Biochemitra
3 жыл бұрын
It being sort of a zero sum does make some sense. You're not hurting someone to make something good happen to you. You're hurting someone else to keep something bad from happening to you. And, theoretically, from happening to others. And if someone is trying to make something bad happen to you, then they should implicitly be prepared for that thing to happen to them. Of course, that raises the question of how good or bad it is to defend the status quo. And we've all seen the story of the character who does horrible things to protect people, but ultimately becomes worse than the things they're protecting people from. And then there's the classical "I'm a species who has to kill to survive. Am I justified in eating people?" fantasy conundrum, where you're technically defending yourself from starvation, but you're not usually feeding on people who chose to attack you first. A vampire who sneaks into people's houses at night to drink their blood is usually considered evil, but a vampire who mainly feeds on bandits and slayers who show up at her door might be an alright person. So I guess you could say there's kind of a social contract in play? "You attacking me is a waver for me defending myself." There are agreed upon rules of society, and if you break them, you're doing evil. But THEN you raise the question of the difference between "good" and "Legal"...
@XenithShadow
3 жыл бұрын
@@Biochemitra Legal is functional equivalent to lawful, you break the law your chaotic. So the lawful/ chaoticness of your characters is somewhat dependent on the society you are currently present in. E.g robin hood would be chaotic good as he breaks that law for not selfish reasons. He couldd be chaotic neutral depending on how justifiable his crimes are. A paladin in the older school underdark would be chaotic good since he is unlikely the follow the laws that allow for slavery ect.
@walteringle2258
3 жыл бұрын
I started playing D&D in April of 1986. My first non-solo player experience was with a guy who grew up going to the early GenCons and did play with Gygax. The Barbarian as a class was originally introduced in an issue of Dragon magazine, eventually rolled into the original Unearthed Arcana. A Barbarian (in those days) was a seriously magic adverse human (speciesism). Literally unable to equip magic, and never lawful. Rage was a later addition in 2nd or 3rd ed. By 2nd ed. officially releasing, a lot of gaming groups had already developed extensive house rules (one example I found in early internet days was at least as wordy as the original Player's Handbook). A common one in the late 80s dealt with alignment restrictions. I remember in my early 20s, before 3rd ed came out, was how can a D&D Barbarian be lawful. I looked them dead in the eyes and pointed them at Piers Anthony's 'Wielding a Red Sword', specifically pointing to the main character becoming the incarnation of War, and how. Others adapted aspects of Paladins so they didn't have to be LG, but they were more martial warriors for their divinity, while clerics often nerfed in hit dice from d8 to d6 and armor selection (something used in the 2nd ed. cleric's options book, which also introduced a lot of other really nifty options, and about the only worthwhile purchase of the lot).
@willem1703
2 жыл бұрын
Barbarian is an easy favorite, still I feel some need to reconfigure it. After all, the greatest influence on the modern barbarian mythos is Conan. Not just violent and magic-averse, undeniably well learned, principled, and relentless in the face of human evils. "They think they're civilized but they will never understand."
@TonkarzOfSolSystem
3 жыл бұрын
5:39 This is actually directly stated in one of the 1e paragraphs in this video. "in the case of player characters, behavior determines actual alignment"
@gonecoastal4
3 жыл бұрын
Just found your channel and I like it! On your mention of the use of force is self defense. "Hurting another creature to help oneself" could be immoral, but is not necessarily immoral. To properly ascertain the morality of the use of force, one must first determine the source of aggression and the degree to which that aggression disrupts or is destructive to a pre-existing tranquility. That is to say the originator of force is the one that holds the moral responsibility of all force used in the resolution of the conflict in question, given that oppositional force is reasonable and proportional. This principle is where the very natural response of a child (Johnny) to say "But Mom, Jimmy punched me first." or the like comes from. No one had to tell Johnny he had good cause to defend himself from Jimmy, Johnny simply knew this to be the case. This concept is so ingrained in the human psyche that it is indistinguishable from an instinct and is the basis of all common law recognition of self defense not only in Western Civilization, but in every society that I have been able to study, which have been several. Using force, even deadly force to stop an aggressor from perpetrating evil, is not, and cannot be evil itself as it is a necessary action to prevent the further destruction of the "good" ( The previously established tranquility/harmony). Thanks for reading this and keep up the great content !
@BobWorldBuilder
3 жыл бұрын
Great points! Thanks for commenting! :D
@Saru5000
2 жыл бұрын
How the character acts afterwards might be a better judge of their alignment. A good aligned character would probably find it a regrettable necessity they were pushed into. An evil character would either not care or may even be happy for the excuse to kill someone.
@Tikimit
3 жыл бұрын
Alignment was never meant to be reduced to a personality test. In 1e (and the source material alignment actually comes from - 3 Hearts and 3 Lions by Poul Anderson as well as Michael Moorcocks Elric stories) it represents a cosmic struggle. It can be summarised with the question “whom do you serve”. There’s a good video on here by The Joy of Wargaming which explores this deeper (as well as a lot of advice on playing d&d properly). There is a graphic in the back of the 1e PHB which actually shows a 17 point alignment chart (includes all the gradients between the usual 9 point alignment system) based on the planes of existence they correspond to. I agree with your advice on how to play the alignments however, but wish more people would recognise that it WAS something much more important. Many examples in 1e books show this. To show one, in 1e, Unholy Water can harm creatures of Lawful Good such as unicorns (their very essence is in tune with the Seven Heavens of Lawful Good) and paladins! The holy paladin is so far removed from normal men that he is affected by unholy water!
@swashbucklerblue
3 жыл бұрын
I like the split between how you act and why you act. I also look at it as morals vs ethics.
@BobWorldBuilder
3 жыл бұрын
Thanks! Yeah I think both should come into play somehow
@danielboggs2013
3 жыл бұрын
I see the OD&D alignment as choosing a side (law or chaos) rather than as a characters personal ethic and find that the best way to go. It makes sense of Alignment languages (only 3) and lets players play their characters however they want.
@brucetucker4847
3 жыл бұрын
Ever read the last of the Narnia novels? Lewis has something to say about that topic. Alignment languages are just silly. So are professional languages that are anything but dialects of another specific language. Putting it in historical context, English and Chinese may both have had thieves' cants, but an English and Chinese thief wouldn't understand a word of the other's cant.
@markissleepy
3 жыл бұрын
The problem with alignment is and always has been that no matter how you define it any real or fictional person can be fit into more than one category. D&D necessarily reduces real world complexity to simple game mechanics but it completely falls apart when it comes to personality traits. It's just an awful system no matter what you do with it. For decades I have only used player character alignment as a general guideline for the players to think about how their character has acted overall up to the point the game starts - after that alignment is ignored entirely except for some classes of supernatural being.
@aliciacordero8399
3 жыл бұрын
This is why I run it as planar alignment. You are Lawful God because you channel [insert god]'s power. I don't care what you do, that is your alignment. Now, your god might care, and might revoke your power, but short of something like that your morality has no bearing on your alignment in my game.
@nathanvalle6997
3 жыл бұрын
@@aliciacordero8399 I approach it similarly. Alignment has no mechanical meaning for mere mundane humanoid mortals. It only matters for Divine, Demonic, Cosmic, otherworldly level stuff where alignment is baked into the essence and metaphysics of the World. In other words, the party murder-hobo is evil but not "Evil" with a capital "E" but that Lovecraftian Elder God over there is definitely "Evil."
@aurtosebaelheim5942
3 жыл бұрын
@@nathanvalle6997 Mentioning Lovecraftian Elder Gods makes this even more interesting, because said Elder God is probably not lower-case-e-evil. They're just going about their business, no hatred, selfishness or carelessness on their part. They probably don't even see mortals as moral agents. But they are capital-E-Evil because their mere presence is antithetical to reality and the lives of those within it. Cosmic ethics can get really interesting, but it has little to no bearing on mortals unless you're running a very high-concept game. I vaguely remember a Pathfinder adventure path dealing with the Qlippoth (the original denizens of the Abyss, the creatures of primal chaos as opposed to the sin-born Demons), creatures that potentially predate the universe depending on which gods you believe. In that adventure path, the Qlippoth mention that they are the true Chaotic Neutral, but because Law established itself as Good they by necessity became evil and the alignment wheel is offset (LN is actually LE because it seeks to impose its tyranny on an innately chaotic world; CN is actually CG because it's all about freedom, creation and innovation; etc.) It's interesting stuff but utterly irrelevant to most people.
@solsystem1342
2 жыл бұрын
Edit: tldr I don't get why people use alignment, the world dynamic that it creates doesn't seem interesting to me and I don't get the appeal of it? The reason that I throw out alignment entirely is that it imposes moral judgments from on high in a way that feels contrary to how my games work. Like the gods (if I even have any in a given setting) are entities that exist in the world. The one time I did use alignment was when there was a gold dragon that was the source of the idea. He wrote a book "on the alignment of species" that defines his black and white world view where the chromatic dragons, goblins, orcs, etc are all evil and he and his children are good since they are metallic dragons. It says something about how he thinks about the world rather then making broad statements like orc=bad because evil god made them.
@Thagomizer
Жыл бұрын
Alignment isn't personality. It's only meant to be a broad description of your character's moral and social beliefs.
@ginothespacewhale593
3 жыл бұрын
Hanging prisoners is awesome. Cheers, Gary
@BobWorldBuilder
3 жыл бұрын
😎👉👉
@saltypork101
3 жыл бұрын
So, I think we're skirting around the issue here, which is that this "archetypal" system of morality doesn't describe well how people actually think and act. For this purpose, personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws are a much more robust system than alignment. I still use alignment as well, but I tie it much more heavily into the cosmology of the world. This emphasises the idea that you "align" yourself to a pre-existing structure. You can act any way you want regardless of alignment, but if you cause enough of an issue that the particular power to which you are aligned is not embodied by you any more, then various bad things that serve the story can start to happen. Alignment in this sense is not a facet of the character themself, but of their relationship to the world. In this sense, the "Lawful Good" are just the gods (here meaning a cosmic authority) that are dominant in the world during this particular epoch, or through whose lens the story is to be told. I usually give this faction a name. Other factions or influences are defined by whether or not this particular "ruling" faction is directly opposed to them in any particular way. So in this way, Chaos actually means "in opposition to the laws as they stand", and Evil means "in opposition to the prevailing morality as it stands". So, a "Lawful Evil" character is one who is aligned in some sense to a cosmic entity/force that is directly supportive of the laws of the Lawful Good, but whose vision for the future of the cosmos is directly opposed to that of the Lawful Good. Meanwhile, a "Chaotic Neutral" character is one who is aligned to a cosmic entity/force that is fundamentally opposed to the laws of the Lawful Good, but whose moral principles are either not well defined or do not directly agree or conflict with the Lawful Good. This kind of distinction between Law and Morality is very important. The law does not always reflect morality, even though it tries to (or tries to appear to, depending where you live and how trustworthy your legislature/judiciary are). It can be compared in a cosmic sense to the distinction between theory and practice, or the direction of a force and the direction of the resultant movement. The idea of the fundamental governing forces of nature having their own moral stance is at the heart of the Fantasy genre, and makes for good story telling in this respect. If you want a more "realism" focused game, then the first thing to throw out, even before Long Rest healing and high level magic, should really be the Good-Evil axis of the alignment chart. Ultimately, which of these labels apply will depend on the nature of the Lawful Good in your world, and the battles that it is inclined to pick. This is by design. However, it is generally a good idea to limit your characterisation of the Lawful Good in your setting to something quite vanilla and unsurprising, precisely because it serves as such a broad backdrop to everything else. If you turn everything on its head when characterising your Lawful Good, you will create an alien world for your players, in which they are unlikely to feel comfortable or equipped to make good decisions.
@BanditsKeep
3 жыл бұрын
Awesome video as always, I do think perhaps you missed the part in the 1e DMG where Gygax pretty clearly says that player action is what sets their alignment. It’s framed a bit differently so maybe not exactly the same as what you’re saying. Interestingly he does seem to specify this for PCs. Great discussion.
@RichardChappell1
3 жыл бұрын
It may be a generational thing. I began playing the 1st edition, and then AD&D, We never had a problem with alignment. I would expect I had a similar understanding as Gygax. Relative morality has become far more common.
@Ironwind1972
2 жыл бұрын
Relative my arse, more like lack of morality has become far too common. The guy making the video basically didn't like capital punishment.
@askthepizzaguy
2 жыл бұрын
@@Ironwind1972 capital punishment can and does get used in a morally "relative" or immoral manner. Example, if the Russian authorities decide to execute people because they are suspected to be disloyal to the political faction in power, they may have the legal authority to do so, but no moral authority to do so. North korea executes its own people for whatever reason they wish. Of course, rather than use the courts, the Russian government just does flat out assassinations these days, rather than use capital punishment. Legal capital punishment is in no way morally objective. It could be used lawfully and against a heinous criminal, but it is not always. Therefore it is an action, which may be legal, but may or may not be related to morality whatsoever. That makes it morally subjective by definition.
@Ironwind1972
2 жыл бұрын
@@askthepizzaguy Ironically no one asked you pizzaguy, haha just kidding. When Gygax was making this game, morals and integrity weren't "relative". Liberals have skewed those standards in society. To help you understand a bit more...the Russians and Koreans you're using as examples would be considered Lawful evil. They follow their own rules, yet the rest of society would consider them evil, because the common man suffers due to those laws. Liberalism would be considered chaotic evil. They spread their propaganda in hopes of breaking society down, essentially causing chaos so they can exploit the innocent. Play the game how you want, but Gygax designed the alignment system on his modern day moral structure. Right and wrong. Today's society has grayed everything out. How can any alignment system work at that point? It was put in place to reward a character for staying true, and to distinguish good from evil.
@RichardChappell1
2 жыл бұрын
@Szymon Lech Dzięcioł I'm not sure you can legitimately say there's a Gygaxian moral stance in relation to the game (I'm sure he has a personal stance). It's more like Gygax created a framework to allow a simple, but relatively complete variation of moral stances within the game.
@dustinu7974
3 жыл бұрын
On the good to evil scale I found describing neautral as selfish and evil as malicious helps avoid alot of the grey area. A neautral character might ignore a beggar even though they have money to spare while a evil character might push them to the ground or worse for being bothered.
@ratnapkins7853
3 жыл бұрын
I never add alignment to my own characters until a few sessions in. I want to get a feel for exactly how this one is playing out. Sure you can start with a basic idea of what the character's personality would be, but it really takes shape as you interact with other PCs, NPCs and depending on DM maybe even the world at large.
@anthonykelly1368
3 жыл бұрын
I started playing D&D in 1981 and played until after I graduated HS in the late 80s. We played after school in a broken down RV that served as our country town’s public library. The world is a very different place now, and there are so many entertainment options that were unimaginable back then. With all the other options available, It’s so great to see D&D still being played with the same passion and imagination we had when we campaigned in the “bookmobile” back in 1981. Cheers!
@juliegolick
3 жыл бұрын
The problem I've always had with the lawful / chaotic axis is how to deal with characters who snub society's laws but who have a personal code. Think, for example, of the thief who only robs rich people or the assassin who won't kill parents with children. Someone who is very clearly not following the laws of the society in which they find themselves, but who may nonetheless act in a very predictable behaviour according to their own moral code. I've heard this argued as being both lawful (because they have their own strict code) and chaotic (because they are not following society's laws). Since I tend to play characters like this, this lacuna has always really frustrated me.
@FunySkywalker
3 жыл бұрын
Everyone follows their own rules, this is allways true. The lawful alignment talks about follow the rules of civilized humanity. The good thief is a chaotic good. In D&D you must think in some monolitic and allways true conception of law and goodness. This is something naive, for sure, but it is a fantasy idealistic game, you know. 🙂
@CondemnedGuy
3 жыл бұрын
Following your own code instead of conforming to the society makes one chaotic.
@darwinxavier3516
3 жыл бұрын
My biggest argument with my DM over alignment was what exactly counted as lawful neutral. Now, a logical person would see this and think that character cares about order above all else whether it was good or evil. But my DM described it as someone who follows their own path, whereas lawful good follows a more official religion or organized structure. So the only difference was seemingly legitimacy and authority. He thought someone blindly following the rules was lawful good as long as they were following a system more established. So this exposed the inherent bias that order subconsciously equated to good. He later "clarified" that he was only talking about what the original meaning of the alignment chart intended. Yet he sure defended that idiotic stance as if he had personal investment in it instead of admitting that it was biased af. Well, he's also secretly a control freak and lowkey blind majoritarian, so he probably did believe on some level that order=good.
@TeianDown
3 жыл бұрын
My favorite alternative to alignment comes from 13th Age's "Icon Relationships". These indicate a character's relationship with some of the big movers and shapers in the setting (known as "icons"), whether that relationship be positive, negative, or ambiguous. I think the implementation and how it impacts gameplay leave a little to be desired, but the overall concept is great. This approach offers the following benefits: -Forces the DM to brainstorm some major powers present in their world (or yank them out of a sourcebook) which, in turn, gives players more to base their character's backstory on. -Conveniently avoids the whole "x race is innately good/evil" can of worms, along with the related discussion of who gets to decide what even *is* good or evil. -Mitigates the "my character's alignment made me do it" meme. -Because characters begin with only 3 points to allocate toward relationships with about a dozen icons, certain types of players can't put words to the effect of "I'm friends with someone helpful in every major center of power at level 1" in their character's backstory. -Gives the DM something they can award characters with (in the form of additional relationship points) besides simple loot.
@cameronpearce5943
3 жыл бұрын
Your voice is so calming. If they ever need to cast Asmodeus in D&D you’d be my top pick because you could probably sell just about anything to anyone with your spring breeze of a voice
@henriquecamboim
3 жыл бұрын
Gygax took the Alignment system from the Michael Moorcock`s works. In there, alignment works like a character`s guideline for their actions. The character is aligns himself to one of the various cosmic forces and no matter how and why they act, the consequences (there`s the catch) of their actions always tend to work in favor of the cosmic forces responsible for the character`s destiny. What are the cosmic forces, I hear you ask? Law, Chaos and Balance (Neutrality). The Good and Evil, as in most post-modern works of literature, is up to the subjective judgement of one`s individual perception. A character can willingly change the side his is aligned with, one example is when Elric took on the quest to save Tanelorn, the mythical city of the forces of Balance.
@kaitar0
3 жыл бұрын
The old 2nd ed Complete Ninja had an alternate alignment take that basically boiled down to Law = honourable and Chaos = dishonourable which I always thought caught the spirit of the rules better than the corebooks ever did.
@Nurk0m0rath
3 жыл бұрын
My personal take on alignment is that good vs evil determines how selfish/selfless a character is, and lawful vs chaotic determines their bias toward social order vs personal liberty. In both cases this is about a character's motivations in taking various actions. For instance, a good character might do a favor for someone with no thought of reward, while an evil character might do the same favor but with the expectation that they are now owed a favor in return. Similarly, a lawful character will study and obey the laws of the land, even if those laws seem bad, while a chaotic character will disregard any laws that go contrary to their own moral code. On a personal level, chaotic characters can be just as moralistic as lawful ones, but when a bunch of them get together, it creates a very chaotic society. It also bugs me how nobody plays evil characters because "evil characters would betray the party." Well, not really. Greedy and selfish people don't automatically push everyone away; many of them still maintain a group of friends and/or partners for entirely selfish reasons. They just won't be the ones listening to your life's story and sympathizing with you.
@michaelreifenstein2114
3 жыл бұрын
When i started playing in 1976 from the original books alignment made perfect sense. we had the perfect examples in book we read at the time. Pretty much everything written by Michal Morecock, but especially Elric and Corum The gods of Order and Chaos were absolutes, good and evil were points of view. We used a lot of stuff from the greyhawk and blackmore supplements. The big books , when they came out were nice, but we used them as an ideas reference and not a bible. we already had software written in basic to do complex character generation taken from tables in White dwarf or dragon magazine. I forget which. Later in the '80s I rewrote a lot of it in C.
@mohammadtausifrafi8277
6 ай бұрын
I completely agree with Gary, his ideas are far more reasonable from a historical perspective.
@skullsquad900
3 жыл бұрын
Cool, sounds a lot like how I run it in my games. Good = Helps Others Evil = Hurts Others Lawful - Follows a Code, Law of the Land, or Spiritual Belief Neutral = Acts Selfishly Chaotic = Reacts Emotionally
@angelonotorio8812
2 жыл бұрын
After 10 years of dnd me and my group have practically stopped using alignment. We only use personality traits, bonds and flaws as guidelines for the PC
@danpitzer765
3 жыл бұрын
To use the rather well known Forgotten Realms and Paladins, even back in 2nd edition, there was something with lawful good that surprised people a lot. A Paladin of Tyr, having cornered a murderer who surrenders, will apprehend him and bring him to trial. A Paladin of Torm, in the same situation, will use Detect Evil, and if the murderer pings evil, will cut him down where he stands. This comes down to a few factors, but chief among them is the dogma of their god that is the source of most of their code of conduct. To the Tyrite, the justice system is how you protect people. You aren't judge and executioner. To the Tormite, if you don't eliminate evil beings whenever and wherever you find them, then you are failing in your duty because they'll go on to victimize others if they live. And Tormites don't really believe in redemption. They have a rather binary worldview, where you /are/ evil, or you /aren't/, and you don't change from that. You may shift between law and chaos, but good and evil are immutable to them. Book of Exalted Deeds in 3.0 highlighted the confusion though, with the thing about how it would be evil to slay a pair of demons that are in love and not currently doing anything wrong but being with each other, because love is good. But at the same time, demons are literally the physical incarnation of Chaotic Evil, 100% incapable of being anything but chaotic evil, just like you can't be anything other than made of flesh and bone and blood.
@creativeburst2442
3 жыл бұрын
I like how Pathfinder 2nd edition describes alignment. Good and Evil Your character has a good alignment if they consider the happiness of others above their own and work selflessly to assist others, even those who aren’t friends and family. They are also good if they value protecting others from harm, even if doing so puts the character in danger. Your character has an evil alignment if they’re willing to victimize others for their own selfish gain, and even more so if they enjoy inflicting harm. If your character falls somewhere in the middle, they’re likely neutral on this axis. Law and Chaos Your character has a lawful alignment if they value consistency, stability, and predictability over flexibility. Lawful characters have a set system in life, whether it’s meticulously planning day-to-day activities, carefully following a set of official or unofficial laws, or strictly adhering to a code of honor. On the other hand, if your character values flexibility, creativity, and spontaneity over consistency, they have a chaotic alignment-though this doesn’t mean they make decisions by choosing randomly. Chaotic characters believe that lawful characters are too inflexible to judge each situation by its own merits or take advantage of opportunities, while lawful characters believe that chaotic characters are irresponsible and flighty. Many characters are in the middle, obeying the law or following a code of conduct in many situations, but bending the rules when the situation requires it. If your character is in the middle, they are neutral on this axis.
@michaelmorris4515
3 жыл бұрын
I haven't used this alignment system in decades. During 3e I ditched it for a homebrew adaptation of Magic: The Gathering's color alignment. This approach solves all the major problems of the traditional alignment system while still allowing for spells and effects that are sensitive to a character's alignment.
@marcmarc1967
3 жыл бұрын
Alignment has been excluded from my campaigns since 1983. Utterly useless. The simple fact is, that when people have enough food and other necessities they behave Lawful Good, and when they are cold and hungry they turn Chaotic Evil. The only variation is how quickly that transition takes place.
@davidnixon5792
3 жыл бұрын
Which is why I've preferred the alignment descriptions in Palladium books over D&D.
@BobWorldBuilder
3 жыл бұрын
Hmm might have to check that out!
@ceomyr
3 жыл бұрын
@@BobWorldBuilder The alignments there are quite descriptive of a character personality and give an actual list of things each would and wouldn't do. To sum them up the alignments are basically: honorable boyscout good, pragmatic freedom loving good, pragmatic selfish but sort of nice, pragmatic unreliable selfish scoundrel, pragmatic unreliable evil snake, honorable but vengeful and brutal evil, and a complete evil monster. Yes that basically works out to LG, NG, N, CN, CE, LE, and well super chaotic evil. There is a tendency for anyone law abiding to be good, and anyone selfish or evil to not be law abiding (if they can get away with it). There is no lawful neutral for a very principled and disciplined character who likes order and authority but who is very selfish yet not ruthlessly evil. There is no chaotic good, if you're good you want to follow the law but you may believe you have to go outside of the law or end some wrong or corrupt laws. It's interesting that arguably two alignments are chaotic evil so they're not all that different except one has an emphasis on being completely monstrously evil like a demon or serial murderer. Good characters are stated not to necessarily be saints and they can have moral flaws but still be honorable and good. Evil characters can be law abiding and super nice and likeable. Evil characters would crush sentient lives without remorse for selfish petty goals, good characters can generally be counted on to try to save sentient lives, and selfish is somewhere between those two.
@ceomyr
3 жыл бұрын
Oh and this system emphatically argues against the idea of "neutral" alignments but still has two alignments that would fit the bill because they may be about being selfish, but they're not good or evil. The system designers may have a point that selfish and morally complicated and unreliable is a better description than "neutral" between good and evil. These selfish alignments will tend to think of evil jerks as being evil jerks and will like good people generally, so they may be selfish but they aren't impartial between good and evil. Most sentient factions seem morally complicated with good, evil and selfish found among both sides. Yet there is still a sort of cosmic forces of light versus forces of darkness story going on, and then some alien beyond-good-and-evil-but-still-evil sorts of cosmic horrors.
@Nikioko
3 жыл бұрын
good = altruistic, bad = egoistic, lawful = disciplined, chaotic = hedonistic Lawful good doesn't mean lawful stupid. Instead of strictly following dogma, it also means to put mercy over justice sometimes as well as doing something bad sometimes to prevent a greater evil. Lawful good characters can also be pragmatic. And chaotic evil doesn't mean psychopathic. It only means that people are egoistic, looking only for their own profit and don't care about rules and put leisure above exercise. It doesn't mean that they don't follow a morale compassso that they walk around and randomly kill people - although people doing so are of course chaotic evil.
@martabachynsky8545
3 жыл бұрын
Our group likes using Chaosium's Pendragon Trait system in our D&D games. It has traits like Merciful vs Cruel, Just vs Arbitrary, Pious vs Worldly, Prudent vs Reckless, etc with a range of 1 to 19; one or two of the traits are noteworthy passions. As the gaming sessions progress, the numbers shift up and down. I have a Paladin character that has a 16 on Indulgent (vs Temperate), and once had a hangover the morning our party were supposed to set off on an adventure. Fun times.
@derrickmiles5240
3 жыл бұрын
Being good when times are easy is not hard. Being good when times are hard is not easy. Thus, being bad while times are easy is more aggregious, while being bad while times are hard is less aggregious. I skew the magnitude of allignent shifts to account for this concept.
@katsilva4277
3 жыл бұрын
5th Edition: Removes all reference to alignment anywhere in any rulebook except as an optional rule engaged by precise no game system whatsoever. Bob: "Alignment is an important part of the game"
@plaidpvcpipe3792
3 жыл бұрын
edit/prologue: So basically we have the same system (though I think of good vs bad differently, more as the ethos behind the law vs chaos of a character). I wrote this before I watched the full video. The way I generally think of it is that law represents personal code. A lawful character has a personal code they adhere to, while a chaotic one doesn't, and a neutral character has some degree of code that they loosely adhere to. As an example, Batman is lawful, he has a set of rules that he almost never compromises and so is the Riddler, who always leaves riddles for Batman to not only know it was he who did the crime, but also so that Batman has a lead to solve it. Meanwhile, good and evil are moral judgement. If you find yourself unsure of the morals of your characters, make them neutral. So when making a lawful character, when you pick an allignment, say, Lawful Good, you should start by making their personal code and ideals, and stay to a mostly morally sound group of ideals and rules. Same with Lawful Neutral but with midground (or uncertain or a mix) of morals for neutral. And for lawful evil you make a Riddler-like rule to follow, say, they're evil within the boundaries of legality, or when they take a job they finish it no matter how evil they have to get to finish it, or they have to leave riddles for America's best detective when they go around evildoing. For neutral (law) characters, make a set of rules and ideals, that you only sometimes adhere to. You should honestly pick a level of adherence, so you don't go from only adhering to your rules when its easy to being conflicted about whether to save a peasant woman being attacked by a vampire when you're low on HP and all your spell slots are exhausted. Character development for the previous example could perhaps see your Neutral Good Wizard going to Lawful Good when he realizes that he's the only person who can save her, and he musters up the strength to right his wrongs. And for chaotic characters, no personal rules. You do as your morals dictate, and there's no code holding you down. For good characters, being chaotic is only a little different than law because of the way morals work, but it's sort of different. Not the best system but I think it works.
@Greywander87
3 жыл бұрын
I'd say both Lawful and Neutral characters have a personal code, but Lawful characters are more rigid with their code, while Neutral characters are more willing to bend their code for a good cause or when subjected to pressure. For example, a Lawful character whose codes forbids them from, say, eating meat, will not eat meat even if it means starving to death. But for a Neutral character, they would eat meat if necessary in order to survive, justifying that they didn't have a choice or that dying was the alternative. With this in mind, it's worth acknowledging that individual points of a personal code can be more or less strict. It's understandable that a Lawful vegan might eat meat to avoid death, but many, if not most LG characters would not murder an innocent child even if it would save thousands or millions of people. Ironically, while many people seem to interpret a Lawful alignment as automatically submitting to any authority or legal system, a Lawful character would probably be _more_ likely to attempt to dethrone an authority or dismantle a legal system if they run contrary to their personal code. If the local law says babies are what's for breakfast, your LG paladin isn't going to just shrug and grab the nearest toddler and spoon, they're going to fight fiercely and righteously to bring down that wicked system. By contrast, a Chaotic character would just ignore the local laws anyway (to a point; they're not going to do something stupid to get arrested), so it wouldn't really matter what those laws were until it actually affects them, personally.
@brucetucker4847
3 жыл бұрын
"Alignment is based on player choices." While I see your point, the counterargument is that this is a _role-playing_ game, players are playing a part, not inserting themselves into the action. What my character chooses to do in any fictional situation isn't necessarily what I would do if I encountered the same situation in real life - and given that the vast majority of players are not, for example, half-orc assassins or drow cavaliers, I would certainly hope this would be the case for them as well. Alignment can also be understood as a tool to help players understand what choices their character would be likely to make. And playing an evil character doesn't make the player evil any more than playing the lead role in Shakespeare's _Richard III_ does.
@PeriLlwynog
3 жыл бұрын
What your character chooses to do is your choice. There is no character without the player and there is no agency without the player. The character doesn’t do anything at my table, the player does.
@brucetucker4847
3 жыл бұрын
@@PeriLlwynog That's a silly way to look at it. Do your players run around chopping people up with swords and casting fireballs? Are your players elves, dwarves, or half-orcs? RPGing is essentially cooperative storytelling. If I tell the story of the Trojan War, does that mean I'm culpable for the actions of the characters in that story? (Because they do some pretty awful things.)
@KayttakaaHumehia
3 жыл бұрын
It could work if the DM asked each players their characters stance on 3-5 defining moral questions, and then after looking at everyones answers would tell the players what each of their alignment is in the setting, because different gameworlds, cultures and situations have different standards of morality and thats something only the DM would know being the "creator" in the campaign universe.
@ericjam6346
3 жыл бұрын
The only time alignment conflicts came into play was when a "good" character found an evil magic item. The Black Razor from White Plume Mountain always seemed to inspire characters to convert to evil. What I think Gary was driving at is alignment doesn't fit into a perfect box. Good people don't always behave good.
@justnoob8141
2 жыл бұрын
Actually no, it’s Sword of Kas that will do it since it’s Neutral Evil and must kill sombody within 1 minute, Blackrazor is Chaotic Neutral and just said “Use me to kill that guy, I’m literally the only weapon in your hand at the moment”
@O4C209
3 жыл бұрын
I think the issue with Alignment is we are using our current views on it where we debate perspective, Nature Vs Nurture, and nuance within conflict. Alignment was made half a century ago by a guy who was trying to justify why some killing is good and other killing is bad in a fantasy game set in medieval times with gods that are present. Why is the Paladin killing the Orc okay, but the Orc killing the Paladin is not? One is good and one is evil. Good and Evil typically can be boiled down to Good kills to protect and Evil kills for fun.
@RichardChappell1
3 жыл бұрын
Because the Orc is an evil character and kills to create harm. The reason the Paladin can kill orcs is because of that concept. If you remove the concept of creatures that are sentient and evil by nature, you create the moral conundrum that confuses so many today. The point of the fantasy game was to have evil beings that characters are justified fighting. Today, so many people anthropomorphize evey monster that makes the game hollow.
@Greywander87
3 жыл бұрын
You could actually argue that the orc killing the paladin isn't necessarily Evil. There's a saying, "Those who live by the sword, will die by the sword." Anyone who lives a life of violence should expect themselves to meet a violent end, whereas the one who lives a peaceful life should be able to expect a peaceful death. A big part of the paladin's mission is to walk the path of violence so that others don't have to. You uphold the peace for others, but not yourself. The paladin is a soldier, not a civilian, so when the orc kills the paladin the orc is simply one soldier killing an enemy soldier. The Evil act is when the orc kills innocent civilians, who don't walk the path of violence.
@RichardChappell1
3 жыл бұрын
@@Greywander87 The argument isn't that an orc is evil because he kills a paladin, but they are evil because they are created to kill, enslave and destory. Being a soldier under orders doesn't change the nature of the person's (or being's) intention. A soldier can be good and kill during a battle with the enemy - provided his personal motive isn't to kill, but only does it in the service of those whom he serves and understands their motives to be good. If you become a soldier for the express purpose of killing, the fact that you're a soldier doesn't change your intentions. The killing may well be justified, but it doesn't change the intention of the person - and that's what makes him evil. Likewise, a "good" person who willingly joins an army committed to evil or works of evil, can't consider himself good. Even though he's following orders, he's willingly going along with orders he knows to be evil. "Good and Evil typically can be boiled down to Good kills to protect and Evil kills for fun." is not correct. Evil henchment kill to protect themselves and the evil they follow. A more accurate statement would be "Good kills by necessity against their will, and Evil kills willingly by choice."
@pdubb9754
3 жыл бұрын
I think the problem I've had with character alignment is that it enables evil characters, and evil equates with antisocial behaviors. Promoting antisocial behaviors in a game designed to be cooperative at best lands you on a slippery slope. While it can be interesting to have surface level tension caused by alignment conflicts, ultimately the game should be cooperative and those conflicts need to take a back seat. I'm not saying that there should be no evil characters, but they need to be played in a way that doesn't undermine the collective fun of the table. Almost every person who ever brought an evil character into a game I played in was not mature enough to figure out how to do that.
@dennispatel3188
3 жыл бұрын
I agree with this, for me the biggest mistake for D&D was to allow evil characters (my opinion of course)
@michaelmclaughlin261
3 жыл бұрын
Perhaps one workaround for "Alignment Language" (something that I have trouble with) is that it is the Language spoken by the denizens of the corresponding Outer Plane -- maybe something like Enochian for Lawful Good, Infernal for Lawful Evil, some kind of spoken Runic for Gladesheim, etc.
@RIVERSRPGChannel
3 жыл бұрын
Some good points I generally use the 1AD&D alignment and yes if you do something against it it can change and there are consequences too
@shallendor
3 жыл бұрын
If i'm going to use alignment, i'll use the Palladium alignment system! Neutral replaced with self serving and all the alignment have a list of rules!
@ddis29
3 жыл бұрын
to me, palladium's system feels incomplete and strict, but it is much more clear and playable than any published in d&d core books (except possibly 4th, havn't read it).
@s0niKu
3 жыл бұрын
That never worked for me, all of my characters fell between two different sets of rules.
@ryannilsson7955
5 ай бұрын
Yeah, I’ve always defaulted to considering Neutral characters as selfish. Siembieda is right that it’s not very practical to have an individual that is neutral on matters. I actually prefer the alignment system from Basic: Good, Neutral (i.e. selfish), Evil. I feel like it is sufficient.
@TonkarzOfSolSystem
3 жыл бұрын
The 3.5 player handbook describes "good" as a willingness to fight to protect the weak, and evil as the willingness to exploit the weak. Neutral individuals prefer good to evil, but lack the commitment to fight for the weak.
@mjkjelland13
3 жыл бұрын
I have always played my characters alignment as a fluid state of being. Slowly changing as decisions are made. When do the same with other players when I DM, letting them know (privately) when I believe they have tipped their alignment one way or the other and offer them the chance to debate my decision.
@GreenBlueWalkthrough
3 жыл бұрын
In my first session, I ran with my game that does not have aliment my players believed they were chaotic evil by taking over towns and in the end a mostly neutral kingdom. However, I believed they were Chaotic good because they helped ensure that kingdom would not join the side of the evil empire in the war with the good republic. And that's the problem with aliment and that's why I don't have a system like that in the game I am deving. Aka what would the DND spell detect good and evil do in this situation?
@theaspie3121
3 жыл бұрын
Detect Good and Evil (at least in 5e) detects aberrations, celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, and undead, not whether something is of the good or evil alignment
@GreenBlueWalkthrough
3 жыл бұрын
@@theaspie3121 Oh that might have been a 4e thing as that's how I saw someone use it as.
@BobWorldBuilder
3 жыл бұрын
Yeah I think alignment only applying to monsters and extra planar creatures makes sense
@aronestone100
2 жыл бұрын
Depends on what they did with and to the towns? By that logic almost all kings and queens in history are evil Like just saying “they took over” isn’t enough to define good or evil.
@WraithMagus
3 жыл бұрын
I've ranted on alignment before in previous videos of yours, so... what's one more time? Often, I tend to view alignment as irrelevant especially to 5e. (Which WotC did by design, and is far smarter than 4e's horrible bastardized "only good and evil, but we still have lawful good and make it gooder than just being good, because we don't understand that if we have an entire axis just to measure good there's no reason to say that lawful also means good". Probably around the seventh highest reason why I never played 4e.) The thing is, good drama tends to come from character motivations and drives that are too nuanced to fit into just nine buckets. Alignment is at best an afterthought to good character motivation in the vast majority of games. (And for this rant, I'm just going to totally set aside the hyper-literalists that think lawful just means you follow the laws and you must be a criminal if you're chaotic...) In fact, it's honestly really, really weird how alignment seems to work if you use it as written, especially back in the "alignment language" days. 3.5, for example, had the miniatures game where your armies were based upon alignment, and all chaotic evil peoples, even and especially when they're from species that are genocidal towards one another, will all band together to murder other alignments, while all the lawful goods will come out to genocide the chaotic goods for not supporting their authorianism. (See also: The Harmonium.) It's a way of looking at the world that is so oversimplifying it completely alienates the players from any of the stakes. It's like saying that this is a world where all the far-right libertarians and far-left anarchists are natural allies who freely work together to fight those darn authoritarian centrists, or that since Orthodox Jews, Catholics, Fundamentalist Protestants, and extremist Muslims are all very conservative religions, they are naturally always going to work together as mutual allies, and never, ever come into conflict. Alignment only really makes sense in the gameworld when you have a setting where the alignments are core to a major, inescapable conflict going on in the gameworld. In Gary Gygax's D&D, it was based upon the notion of the Romans "bringing civilization to the barbarians and beating back the wilderness". (In fact, Druids really should have been Chaotic, as nature is chaotic in this early vision, but Druids were just a kit until too late for that, and by 3e, the wilds were "neutral", and chaos was reserved for "entropy"...) The conflict in that setting was always one of humans struggling to sustain any civilization at all against "forces of chaos" that are all "trying to destroy (western) civilization", and are handily coded as "barbarians" by being dressed as Asians, like the explicitly Mongol-inspired hobgoblins! It's a system where cultists to evil gods whose "reward" for selfless devotion to the cause of evil is eternal torture, and where said cultists happily declare themselves to be the evil bad guys who actively worship concepts like pain or murder. Everyone evil knows and gleefully revels in their evil, the alignment system does not comfortably allow for people to be self-deluding themselves into thinking they are good and proper people who keep up appearances as pious followers of gods of mercy and give to charity with the vast fortunes they obtained through callous exploitation of slaves their overseers work to the death. You could make a setting based on, for example, spies in the Cold War. Alignment there would make sense to be Capitalism vs. Communism. The players, if on the same side, would necessarily need to be the same alignment there, while they would need to sniff out the loyalties of the NPCs. (Detect Communist/Capitalist Tendencies and Nondetection would be very powerful spells, indeed...) The thing is, when people create settings like this, they tend to just pound the square peg of these ideas into the same round "Lawful" and "Chaotic" holes. ("Lawful means good, so obviously the Capitalists should be Lawful!" "Nuh-unh, all the propaganda I watched as a kid said Soviets are bad because they're authoritarian and controlling, so they're the Lawful, and Capitalists are chaotic because MAH FREEDOM!") In fact, the "Great Wheel" cosmology really cements the problems of the different things alignment has meant over the years. As I previously mentioned, the original version of chaos fit druids very well, since in a world about whether nature or civilization should reign, they're clearly on the side of nature. (This is also the reading of chaos that has elves as generally chaotic - they're the traditional, nature-loving race. Because tradition is chaotic in this reading. That's right, you heard me.) Mechanus (the pure incarnation of law) means being reduced to an unfeeling robot devoid of all sentience, much less emotion, while Limbo (pure incarnation of chaos) means entropic destruction of everything. Neither of these are fates any sane person would want, meaning any alignment besides neutral is crazy. (And they're derived from Michael Moorcock's books where Chaos means the entropic decay of the universe, while Law means complete stagnation of a completely dead universe... with the hero upholding "balance" (neutrality) as the only way any life can exist... because in that kind of setting, any alignment besides neutral is crazy, meaning you have no real choice, you're either neutral or suicidally stupid. This is a bad way to frame a setting and nominally give the players choice in it!) It's because of this overloading that so many wildly different and irreconcilable views of alignment can arise, especially along the Law-Chaos axis. Modern books tend to put "tradition" as a quality of Lawful characters, but Lawful is supposed to be the alignment of change and progress... which books now would put as chaotic traits. In the framework of something like JRR Tolkien's books, however, Lawful industrialism is absolutely framed as the hallmark of the villains, while Chaotic traditional nature-bound ways of life are the hallmark of the heroes. This brings with it a rich tradition of the social stains brought about by the forcing of people off their traditional pastoral lifestyles and into crowded smog-choked cities during the Industrial Revolution, and follows in the footsteps of noted inspiration for Tolkien, The Ring of Nibelung, which explicitly had industry and its lust for wealth as the source of evil. Meanwhile, D&D copies liberally from Tolkien, making the elves the chaotic good defenders of traditional pastoral life... and then also makes chaos mean they reject all tradition and embrace change and the new. Oh, and lawful people are robots now. I also went out a couple years ago and took all the top "D&D alignment quiz"es that I could find, including the official 3.5 one that's still up. I answered as myself, just giving what I think I would do in those situations. The results I got were that I was Lawful Good in one, Neutral Good in two, and Chaotic Good in another. (And I only got "good" all the time because it's a REALLY low bar - in the one where I got Lawful Good, it was because in a scenario where I'm being offered money by a literal demon to murder children, I said I wouldn't *murder children for a literal demon.* ) What is even being asked about makes a huge difference in what alignment I'm getting as a result - the Lawful Good one was all about incredibly stupid things like if I would lie to friends for no reason, and if I don't, I must be super-duper lawful! The polls where I get Chaotic Good are ones that actually ask about beliefs, including things like politics, and since I'm not authoritarian, I'm therefore super-duper chaotic! The official 3.5 one was one that actually asked both sorts of questions, and that's one where I wound up Neutral Good. Strange how that works, it's almost like these are two wholly different and incompatible concepts being forced into a single term... Law and Chaos in particular are just terms too heavily overloaded with too many mutually incompatible ideas to really be meaningfully used in a broader context, and I think that D&D is better off just setting out a system whereby they encourage every DM to set up their own alignment axes that make sense within the context of the setting they are building. Law and Chaos usually don't matter or make sense in most games of D&D. It makes more sense to have something like the aforementioned Cold War setup where PCs are asked questions about their views on whatever the core dramatic questions the campaign is centered around, such as Imperialism vs. Isolationism if the game is in a setting where the nation the PCs are in is in conflict over its military policy after the empire has suffered defeat in a protracted war. Ask whether the players are Xenophiles or Xenophobes in a game setting where racial tensions are a key driving factor of the plot. Stop trying to force every problem into Law and Chaos, and set up clear alignment axes for the actual questions and quandries you are going to be putting to players. (And while I almost never have arguments about what is good or evil behavior, Good vs. Evil as an axis is also almost never a useful source of actual drama in a game. A simple "you'll get paid lots of money to burn the orphanage, but IS THAT THE RIGHT THING TO DO?!" moral nonsense is not at all an interesting choice and doesn't make for good conflict, either. Any kind of moral conflict that actually will get players arguing what is or isn't the right moral choice is probably going to be so murky an edge-case that you either need to rewrite that alignment as "Deontological vs. Utilitarian" so that it's an actual philosophical argument or else it's going to be the DM just declaring one player's moral beliefs wrong, and I can't imagine how THAT would cause an argument.)
@agentcooper6361
2 жыл бұрын
It's also worth mentioning that in the 1st Ed DMG it's suggested that the DM is supposed to be keeping an alignmnent graph for each player, based on their game actions. So a player could have their chosen alignment written on their character sheet, while the DM may have determined them to have espoused a much different alignment on his graph behind the screen. So there's that.
@Keovar
Жыл бұрын
1:14 - The Poul Anderson book _Three Hearts and Three Lions_ is the primary source for the Law/Chaos alignment system. The Elves, Dragon, and Lycanthrope in the story are all aligned with Chaos, along with a Troll, a Giant, a Demon-summoner, a Nixie, cannibalistic hillmen, and Morgan LeFay herself. The divide is really about civilization and medieval european ideas of morality vs. the wilderness and magic.
@williamlee7482
3 жыл бұрын
Alignment is basically a outlook on life and how societies feel and act towards situations . With a characters avtions they can fluctuate around the spectrum of alignment their character is , so a chaotic good character can act at times lawful buy still be chaotic good . An example is following the laws of the kingdom they live in while still having the freedoms to do what the character wants by ignoring certain things that society feels is what should be normal . Without alignments what is to stop a player from playing his Paladin like a murder hobo ( which in all my 42 years of Dm'ing and playing many rpg's I have never encountered ) . Alignment like I said before is an outlook on life and how the character interacts with society as a whole , some follow societies rules ( not law ) and some ignore societies rules while still obeying the laws of the kingdom
@Alex-sf5uz
3 жыл бұрын
I prefer to look to the source material, Gygax didn't invent alignment one of the best examples in book form and probably what inspired Gygax is the Elric series, in the series there are two pantheons that fight over the universe generally referred to as the Lords of chaos and the Dukes of Law, a third cosmic power neutral seeks to keep balance between the two and prevent any one of them gaining too much control. D&D has something similar with the celestials, devils, demons etc and pretty much evey setting is defined by the struggle between these cosmic powers
@MWA35
3 жыл бұрын
This is the way I like to run it, if I'm using alignment as something PCs have; alignment is what side you're on, who you work for, it's a concrete, in-fiction thing. And maybe you don't always get to choose your alignment, maybe it chooses you - you don't stop being lawful because you're murder hoboing all over the place, you stop being lawful because an angel noticed the murders and came down and sacked you. You don't become chaotic because you steal from the orphanage fund, you become chaotic because you picked up the wrong sword and now it's constantly whispering to you (all my Moorcock knowledge is from the Blue Öyster Cult song) This ties in somewhat with the alignment languages, if we're using the example of medieval Catholics speaking Latin. Peasants don't speak latin, because they're neutral; but if you're on the inside: a priest, a knight, a doctor, you've been educated in that system. And wider than that, you probably also have a variety of shibboleths for when someone on the other side has learned the language. Doing it this way does force certain bits of world building on you, but it's interesting world building, and it really drives conflict. Planescape is probably a good example here
@BobWorldBuilder
3 жыл бұрын
Yeah, I've seen a number of good (haha, good) comments here saying that law/chaos should be the only axis, and that makes a lot more sense to me the more I think about it
@zadkiel242
3 жыл бұрын
I always wondered about the alignment specific languages.
@wyliecapp
3 жыл бұрын
I try to get my players to tell me or write up a list of tenants they follow or the characters general ideals, then we determine what alignment they are. As a DM I dont usually change a character alignment unless for a large part of the campaign the player has ignored those ideals/tenants and usually that means adding minor character flaws or class penalties if their behavior is against the order/God they follow (mostly for paladins, Clerics or Warlocks). I always give them a good reason, and explain to them how they can fix it or how they can change orders/gods/patrons that fit their new ideals better, thus they can keep playing like they were with a neat character development.
@Huyderman
3 жыл бұрын
I've moved towards more or less dropping the good/evil axis, as I feel it just makes things too black & white, and can be a crutch. I still keep the law-chaos one, but feel it works best when the eternal battle between chaos and law is an actual thing in the campaign. A characters action then represent which side the characters actions and behaviour lean towards, and thus also whom of the lords of law and chaos favour the character. I tend to try to avoid equating law with good and chaos with bad though, with both sides capable of both.
@vladislav8989
3 жыл бұрын
The selfish/selfless dichotomy never worked for me. There are many selfish people who aren't evil. It should be beneficent/self-interested/malicious. Coupled with disciplined/individualist/rebellious.
@OrangeyChocolate
3 жыл бұрын
I like having alignment in my games, because it acts as a handy rough guide to a particular character’s beliefs and behaviours. That said, I try not to place too much importance on alignment, nor do I police how my players play their alignment. That’s for the players to decide. Most recently, I included in my game a piece of an artefact that caused intense dizziness and nausea in non-evil characters so long as they were touching it. It facilitated world building and foreshadowing of future events, and it let the players know that this weird piece of metal was *bad* news.
@byronkooper
3 жыл бұрын
Great video Bob. I find alignment an interesting and important concept in the D&D cosmos that is absent in most other systems. I run alignment very similarly to you where the actions of the players may eventually shift their alignment to another point in the axis and, depending upon their character and backstory (for example a lawful good paladin of Bahamut slowly becoming a chaotic neutral paladin) may have in-game consequences such as a test of faith or perhaps their deity relinquishing their powers they gave them, requiring them to go on a quest of redemption or perhaps to worship a new deity who coincides with their new alignment.
@krisredmond1840
Жыл бұрын
Once again your informative video and soft and relaxed tone has earned you the nick name Cool Bobby. I encourage all your friends to address you as such.
@jamesevans5495
3 жыл бұрын
Asking for a list of do's and don't's for lawful is a good idea! This is an helpful way of looking at it. It also keeps down an excuse to say "I'm good becasue I serve the nine hells, and murdering people is good to the hells, so I'm good from their perspective, and so you have to let me be a LG Paladin that kills whomever I want" sort of thing. (Unless you want to include that sort of cosmic level moral ambiguity in the game! and no I've not had someone try that....yet...) This reminds me that, in spite of the !Satanic Panic!, Gygax was a Christian. I imagine he was operating under an assumption of a broadly Christian moral framework in addition to classic fantasy order/chaos. I can see where he made alignment a series of beliefs.
@BobWorldBuilder
3 жыл бұрын
Thanks! And yeah, it was tempting to bring up how his own beliefs may have influenced these original definitions, but i don't even want to know what that could have done to the comments section
@Aligariusful
3 жыл бұрын
If you haven't seen it yet, Chris Perkins has been talking about this a lot lately, and with how it will be handled in books to come.
@XP2Life
3 жыл бұрын
Oh nice! I need to look that up.
@BobWorldBuilder
3 жыл бұрын
Yeah, originally Ii was going to start the video with something about the new "typical alignment" but I decided to do something goofy :P
@Aligariusful
3 жыл бұрын
@@BobWorldBuilder Goofy is always better :)
@sdev2749
Жыл бұрын
No mate you have it wrong. If you base alignment directly on what player choices are made then you end up with a long line of characters from the individual player that all think and act alike if confronted with the same situations. The reason for alignment was for player back then to experience a morality that may be different from their own personal morality and to be forced to play a character in line with that rolled morality. This became a skill for PLAYERS to ignore their own personal real world belief systems and immerse themselves in the morality (alignment) of the character they were playing. This is the whole point. You must divorce yourself from your own morality and act out thoughts and ideas and resulting actions based on the morality of the character in front of you. If you cannot do that then you fail in one of the major important aspects of roleplaying as a social skill, the ability to put yourself in the shoes of another being and act accordingly, to THIER beliefs and NOT your beliefs. If your own beliefs happen to align with those of your character then great, you will have an easy time making decisions and acting accordingly. However, if your own morality is different than that of your character then you have a challenge and from that you can develop a skill in understanding, empathy, and feeling what your character might feel when confronted with situations of morality. Mastering that is the greatest skill as a player in my honest opinion. I have been playing and GM'ing since 1980 to this day so I do know what I am talking about, I was there when this started.
@robertshort9487
3 жыл бұрын
Kinda confused by the start of the video. And by the end. Eye for an Eye would be a great Definition of Lawful Good, from a society level, obviously someone serving under others will follow more rules than that, but that's the basic idea behind it. And not sure how self defense would be anything but good.
@mandodelorian4668
3 жыл бұрын
Alignment has universally been the first 'rule' that I've seen almost every player/gm ditch (or more likely just flat out ignore) right from the start. Practically all games not spelled "D&D" have ditched the system as pointless and problematic. One of the best ways I've seen a game conceptualize the role of the characters in the content of the game is Monster of the Week where they basically say "you're the heroes, act like it". This really allowed our group to push things right up to the line and then either stop right there and think about what we're doing or keep an eye on the one(s) who cross the line or at least want to.
@___i3ambi126
3 жыл бұрын
I thought that was encumbrance
@mandodelorian4668
3 жыл бұрын
@@___i3ambi126 Nah, I've had GMs actually use that, lol.
@mandodelorian4668
3 жыл бұрын
I guess another way to look at that is: Alignment causes problems for the GM, encumbrance causes problems for the players. Encumbrance is clear cut so the DM can say "you can't carry that much gold, statues, tapestries, carpets, and weapons back to town". which in 5e probably doesn't matter because there's not much to do with gold, but the older the edition, the more gold mattered.
@___i3ambi126
3 жыл бұрын
@@mandodelorian4668 what problems does alignment cause for the dms? Ive had a few saving throws call it out, the outer planes call it out, lycanthropy uses it. But in all those cases, the dm just asks the player's alignment on the spot and applies the affect if they dont match a specific one.
@mandodelorian4668
3 жыл бұрын
@@___i3ambi126 Players ignoring it/acting against the one they chose and Dm trying to call them out/enforce their choice. Or more often than not these days it seems a lot of players just pick Chaortic Neautral to justify the random Joer like behavior.
@geoffreystraw5268
3 жыл бұрын
I actually use this in my games already and completely agree with you on how alignment works. Great vid man! :)
@JoshuaCairns
3 жыл бұрын
The original D&D alignment had more to do with whether your player has chosen a side in the eternal wars of the gods but they also defined your role in society (law - society-centric also considered as being good; chaos - individual-centric also considered untrustworthy and evil; neutral - attempting to find and keep a balance between the alignments) - some have called law and chaos the worldview. Holmes D&D introduced good or evil, which was considered your morality (clerics originally had to be good or evil and couldn't be neutral). It's disputed whether Holmes or Gygax created the 5 alignments: LE, LG, N, CG, & CE, but Holmes still largely felt his version of D&D only had the three alignments. AD&D 1e brought the full 9 alignments, whereas Moldvay D&D (B/X) brought it back to the basic three, and that's where it stayed with up through BECMI D&D. Like you mentioned it just became a more complicated mess with each edition and veered away from its original intent. Many OSR players keep it to the original three or get rid of it altogether.
@BobWorldBuilder
3 жыл бұрын
Yeah, I think Law-Neutrality-Chaos is the way to go. Simple and actual useful!
@williamharper6625
3 жыл бұрын
I like the World of Darkness humanity, moral, or integrity system a bit more. It also punishes the player that not playing nice. One example is the player character killing everything that moves will lead the character to becomes a "monster" (In a TV Trope meaning) is no longer playble. It also made more in a way were there is no reward for being evil. You are doing it for the shortcuts, or a lack of imagination on finding other alternatives. Unlike Fallout karma or starwars being evil does not give you access to more awesome perks or powers and if it does it very steep of a cost, starting with your sanity.
@poodlefilmstrailer
3 жыл бұрын
Best alignements descriptions comes from AD&D 2e Dark Sun core book which explains it with examples of water survival rationing point of view from AL perspective
@robbyslilshadow1948
2 жыл бұрын
FYI Philip Zimbardo is a psychologist who did the Sanford Prison experiment and did detailed analysis on P.O.W. Prison abuse AND went on and on about the stages of greasing the slippery slope towards evil. IMHO that is great for Sci-fi Fantasy fiction authors in the RPG to loook into!
@datastorm75
3 жыл бұрын
AD&D 2nd edition Dragonlance had an entire mechanic for alignment shifting based on player action with the character, so that it would settle on an alignment appropriate to how players are playing.
@BigCowProductions
3 жыл бұрын
I am totes sticking around for a month to grab at least that backlog of adventurss. Thanks XLB the Builder!
@arrd
3 жыл бұрын
There is a great tabletop called Scion that was crowdfunded that had something similar to "alignment" (I forget what they called it). But I really like how they treated it. It was essentially Percy Jackson where you play the child of different pantheon from across the globe. Your character was basically compelled to follow certain (not all) characteristics from your God parent and the more you did the closer to Divinity you became, almost like you are taking on their "divine" characteristics. It gave a narrative and gameplay reason to follow it as opposed to something you choose and never look at again.
@SuperSpamcan
3 жыл бұрын
I'm currently playing in an interesting campaign with a homebrew world where alignment is determined differently. Rather then you choosing your alignment, your alignment is given to you over time by the gods, which take the form of adjectives they would use to describe you, and a number they would use to determine how strongly you display that trait.
@cycleboy8028
3 жыл бұрын
As you pointed out, jerk could be murderhobos. But, that could also be what is being played! Now, does that type of character (of which exist IRL, i.e. gansta thugs, etc) fit in the group. And they'd be pursued by good aligned groups for their ways. So, if you want an "evil campaign", there's ways to do it. Sometimes you do need the ethos of your alignment to help guide the player into making the "correct" choice for the PC if the player is trying to RP a type different from themself.
@berserkerciaran
3 жыл бұрын
A good alternative to alignment I've seen explored recently is to think "What colors of mana would my character wield?" Which would only work for MtG players, but gives you 31 different "alignments" that aren't in explicit conflict with one another. For example, a Black/White character could be a Lawful Evil leader of a corrupt church, or a Chaotic Good necromancer working on giving their summoned undead their personalities back and make them full people again
@BobWorldBuilder
3 жыл бұрын
Hmmm maybe this is a useful part of MtG that can be brought into D&D!
@efeshen
3 жыл бұрын
i use principled/pragmatic and altruist/egoist axis as a framework. principles are defined in character creation so no 2 characters play by the same rules. it also contributes to world building as each new character has to base his principles to socioeconomic or historical and circumstantial factors. everybody except the most borderline individuals have some that they relate with different degrees of flexibility.
@MrGeneralPB
3 жыл бұрын
and that is why i hate being a gm in d&d... i prefer basically any other rpg system over this alignment and class based shenanigans that always have players spending more time arguing over "that's what my character would do because he/she is (players alignment, class or whatever)"
@duieb
3 жыл бұрын
Hi Bob. When are you going to make dm guides to another module?
@axlaxolotl4851
3 жыл бұрын
Here’s how you fix alignment: never bring it up, just let players pick whatever.
@kerwinbrown4180
3 жыл бұрын
The game is called role playing and alignment is your guide for playing the character. It is the summation of the characters ideology that drives their actions. They can voice another alignment that they practice but what they practice is what they are.
@CondemnedGuy
3 жыл бұрын
You've got it the other way around. Alignment is the summation of your characters actions and ideals. It's up to the player if they want to keep a specific alignment or not.
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