Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

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Emperor Julian said:
People often make the fallacy of presuming allignment is a hard coded rule, I've always thought of it more of a general trend. For example a friend once quipped I'm lawful neutral in society but chaotic good with people I like.
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Alignment doesn't exist in reality, but in the D&D-verse Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil are actual, physical forces in the universe, with various otherwordly beings literally made out the stuff, and in general all creatures are a single alignment, especially since it determines what deities you are able to worship and gain boons from in return. There are also spells that specifically effects beings of certain alignments, and fail against others. So in the case of most official D&D settings, alignment is hard-coded into the fabric of reality.
 
Dunsparce said:
Alignment doesn't exist in reality, but in the D&D-verse Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil are actual, physical forces in the universe, with various otherwordly beings literally made out the stuff, and in general all creatures are a single alignment, especially since it determines what deities you are able to worship and gain boons from in return. There are also spells that specifically effects beings of certain alignments, and fail against others. So in the case of most official D&D settings, alignment is hard-coded into the fabric of reality.
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I think their point that was characters can act against their alignment. The Neutral Good Fighter might, in the correct circumstance, go long with the party kidnapping someone for ransom even though it's definitely not a "Good" thing to do. They're not going to be happy about it, they'll probably feel remorse for it, and there will be conflict with the rest of the party, but their alignment isn't a hard lock on their behavior. They can go against it, it's just a general indication of how they usually do things, not a Robocop-style Directive.

I once played a Lawful Good Paladin of the god of justice who, at the end of a whole chain of adventures trying to catch and bring an evil sorcerer to justice, just executed the guy. His reasoning? He was tired, he knew the sorcerer was likely to escape before being passed judgment, and he had no reason to believe the sorcerer regretted anything he had done. So he killed the guy and accepted the hit against his ideals. He felt remorse, he knew he had done something wrong according to his faith, and he went after penance (and the GM was nice enough to give me a little sidequest for it), but he wasn't completely locked down by his alignment. He just had to face the consequences of going against it.
 
Dunsparce said:
Alignment doesn't exist in reality, but in the D&D-verse Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil are actual, physical forces in the universe, with various otherwordly beings literally made out the stuff, and in general all creatures are a single alignment, especially since it determines what deities you are able to worship and gain boons from in return. There are also spells that specifically effects beings of certain alignments, and fail against others. So in the case of most official D&D settings, alignment is hard-coded into the fabric of reality.
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I've always liked AD&D's alignments as there were more of them and made more sense. There was even a 3rd party splat book released that talked about them more.
 
I wholeheartedly and unironically love the idea that there are little cube and circle robots actuating "lawfulness" from behind the scenes in their law plane. Or dumb shit like in planescape torment where a whole city in the outer planes teleports to another plane because its general alignment shifts due to in game events. (if I'm even remembering that weird ass game correctly)
 
Anonymus Fluhre said:
I've always liked AD&D's alignments as there were more of them and made more sense. There was even a 3rd party splat book released that talked about them more.
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You mean the Square-Funky alignment, or the fact that it had neutral characters lean towards certain axises as NPCs? Because 2e had the same 9 last I checked.
 
Dunsparce said:
Alignment doesn't exist in reality, but in the D&D-verse Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil are actual, physical forces in the universe, with various otherwordly beings literally made out the stuff, and in general all creatures are a single alignment, especially since it determines what deities you are able to worship and gain boons from in return. There are also spells that specifically effects beings of certain alignments, and fail against others. So in the case of most official D&D settings, alignment is hard-coded into the fabric of reality.
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Yes but if you're a mortal its more a general behavoir pattern outside of magic, For example while my Wizard was Lawful evil but doted on his daughters and wife. their was also a king in game who showed up as chaotic neutral but since he was a at the top of the ladder in an age of war most people where none the wiser.
 
Adamska said:
You mean the Square-Funky alignment, or the fact that it had neutral characters lean towards certain axises as NPCs? Because 2e had the same 9 last I checked.
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There was also Lawful Chaotic alignments, Chaotic Lawful and other combinations.
 
Anonymus Fluhre said:
There was also Lawful Chaotic alignments, Chaotic Lawful and other combinations.
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What.

No.

No. That's never how that worked. Even 1e had them as opposed, meaning you can't be both and they had only 9 alignments after the Basic runs just had the basic Law-Chaos line. What are you on about.
 
Adamska said:
What.

No.

No. That's never how that worked. Even 1e had them as opposed, meaning you can't be both and they had only 9 alignments after the Basic runs just had the basic Law-Chaos line. What are you on about.
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It was more about how the character was changing their alignment from one to the other.
 
Anonymus Fluhre said:
It was more about how the character was changing their alignment from one to the other.
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No. That's still not a thing beyond every edition having rules on you changing your alignment based on action. That sort of set up you mentioned (chaotic lawful) doesn't exist, there was never interstages like that. Again, what are you on.

The most older DnD did was make it cost EXP due to your weakening resolve and changing of ways.
 
Hey, kids! Is it time for Extra Credits to do another shitty politically-charged hot take that makes them look like a bunch of stupid racists?


Golly, I think it is!

On the bright side, not even their audience is having any of it:

1617326827356.png


1617326955690.png
 
Corn Flakes said:
I think their point that was characters can act against their alignment. The Neutral Good Fighter might, in the correct circumstance, go long with the party kidnapping someone for ransom even though it's definitely not a "Good" thing to do. They're not going to be happy about it, they'll probably feel remorse for it, and there will be conflict with the rest of the party, but their alignment isn't a hard lock on their behavior. They can go against it, it's just a general indication of how they usually do things, not a Robocop-style Directive.

I once played a Lawful Good Paladin of the god of justice who, at the end of a whole chain of adventures trying to catch and bring an evil sorcerer to justice, just executed the guy. His reasoning? He was tired, he knew the sorcerer was likely to escape before being passed judgment, and he had no reason to believe the sorcerer regretted anything he had done. So he killed the guy and accepted the hit against his ideals. He felt remorse, he knew he had done something wrong according to his faith, and he went after penance (and the GM was nice enough to give me a little sidequest for it), but he wasn't completely locked down by his alignment. He just had to face the consequences of going against it.
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I would argue that a paladin of the god of justice who is confronted with a recidivist, truly evil foe, is entirely justified in executing such an enemy (albeit swiftly, cleanly, and with as little pain as possible). Torturing such an enemy to death would most certainly be a violation, but assuming the paladin has ironclad evidence of guilt, the response should be to lop the bastard's head off, give him a proper burial, and move on.

Carrot Ironfoundersson (from Pratchett's Watch novels) is my go-to for paladin behavior, and he suckered an enemy into dropping his guard before he literally nailed the bastard to a stone pillar with his sword. 'Demons flee when a good man goes to war,' after all.
 
Corn Flakes said:
Hey, kids! Is it time for Extra Credits to do another shitty politically-charged hot take that makes them look like a bunch of stupid racists?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ymUEPKTEQaQ
Golly, I think it is!

On the bright side, not even their audience is having any of it:

View attachment 2050475

View attachment 2050479
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Comparing an evil race to an ethnicity just makes you the racist, not anyone else. Seriously, people who do that are openly admitting that they see the minorities they speak for as the evil violent race, and they're just too fucking stupid to understand they let their bigot out.
 
Adamska said:
Comparing an evil race to an ethnicity just makes you the racist, not anyone else. Seriously, people who do that are openly admitting that they see the minorities they speak for as the evil violent race, and they're just too fucking stupid to understand they let their bigot out.
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I'm wondering if they played a game with a black dude, would they let him play an orc? In my experience, due to a culture of big dick energy in the black community black guys tend to go for races that tend to have good physical stats and play their favored Greatsword heroes. There's outliers of course, but in my experience the brothers prefer being the medieval Iron Monger...or a monk.
 
EnemyStand said:
I'm wondering if they played a game with a black dude, would they let him play an orc? In my experience, due to a culture of big dick energy in the black community black guys tend to go for races that tend to have good physical stats and play their favored Greatsword heroes. There's outliers of course, but in my experience the brothers prefer being the medieval Iron Monger...or a monk.
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Oddly, the black guys I played D&D with, one I distinctly remember playing a shadow elf mage of some sort, and the other was running a ranger. But neither of those two had that 'big dick energy' personality. One was a total weeaboo (nice enough guy though), and the other was this weirdly polished sort who made me think of a less angry Malcolm X at times. Very firm in his beliefs but he didn't get loud about it.
 
Capsaicin Addict said:
Oddly, the black guys I played D&D with, one I distinctly remember playing a shadow elf mage of some sort, and the other was running a ranger. But neither of those two had that 'big dick energy' personality. One was a total weeaboo (nice enough guy though), and the other was this weirdly polished sort who made me think of a less angry Malcolm X at times. Very firm in his beliefs but he didn't get loud about it.
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Well, like I said there are outliers. This is also anecdotal. These just happened to be some dudes who were at cons and just checking things out, so they might've just been newbie fighters, honestly.
 
...but their 'solution' just kicks the 'shoot on sight' can further up the road.

Is a 17 year old who got conscripted into the SS near the end of WWII at, essentially, gunpoint an irredeemable monster on par with a literal demon? Are the poor/mentally ill/desperate people who end up in cults acceptable targets for slaughter because of their 'bad choices'? Is an abused kid who's never been to school and who parrots his racist dad's words because it's the only rhetoric he knows a subhuman now?

Like I get why people don't like racial alignment (I actually don't use it in my homebrew setting), but hot damn do I not trust these people to come up with something better.

EDIT: Xenomorphs aren't evil. They're violent, territorial predators, but they aren't that different from other violent, territorial animals, just more dangerous.
 
Sobble said:
...but their 'solution' just kicks the 'shoot on sight' can further up the road.

Is a 17 year old who got conscripted into the SS near the end of WWII at, essentially, gunpoint an irredeemable monster on par with a literal demon? Are the poor/mentally ill/desperate people who end up in cults acceptable targets for slaughter because of their 'bad choices'? Is an abused kid who's never been to school and who parrots his racist dad's words because it's the only rhetoric he knows a subhuman now?

Like I get why people don't like racial alignment (I actually don't use it in my homebrew setting), but hot damn do I not trust these people to come up with something better.
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Racial alignment is great for mechanical purposes, and that's really why it's there. When you have a Detect Evil spell, it's good to have a tag on the monsters that tells you whether they register on that spell. If you have a Sword of Chaos that deals additional damage to the Lawful, it's good to know whether that creature over there is metaphysically a being of Order.

That would actually be something interesting to use in a game/setting: personal alignment vs. "internal" alignmnt. Orcs as a species are Chaotic Evil because they were created specifically by their Chaotic Evil god to be his followers. Individuals can be of any alignment (culturally they tend to fall into CE for unrelated reasons), but even if you have a Lawful Good Orc Paladin, their essence is still Chaotic Evil. And so that Paladin can charge through the Big Bad Evil Guy's Protection From Good ward. Likewise, the Goliath in the group may be Chaotic Good... but his essence is still Lawful Neutral so he gets to follow the Paladin in caving the BBEG's head in clean through that protection spell.

I'm glad my GM doesn't read the farms, because I'm definitely going to talk to him about that idea.

Sobble said:
EDIT: Xenomorphs aren't evil. They're violent and territorial, but they aren't that different from other violent, territorial animals, just more dangerous.
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Which is to show some things are always kill on sight, regardless of alignment or culture.

Like Neogi.

Or Gnomes.
 
From what I've seen over the years, D&D has always allowed free will for mortal races. The problem we have now is that some people are incapable of grasping that different species have different morals vs the objective moralities involved in the good/evil axis of the game environment. What a marauding Orc war chief considers good in his pursuit of the standards set by his creator god Gruumsh are not the same as those of a priest of Hextor or a paladin of St. Cuthbert. But this is a "good" with a small g as opposed to axial alignment Good with a big G. There's always been a number of players incapable of grasping morality in the framework of the game along the spectrum of "the poor orcs are misunderstood and are being represented unfairly" to "wtf why did my paladin fall those orphans were clearly evil". I and my group just ignore the idiocy put forth by milquetoast devs pandering to the dangerhair crowd and reserve the ethical and moral debates for our own game. I don't even bother writing an alignment on my character sheets because the words mean nothing if they are not backed by a character's actions and personality, anyway.
 
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