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19 comments

  • Good, the alignment system doesn't translate into videogame format very well. You don't have a DM who can make on the fly decisions and changes as a reaction to alignment based missteps.

    In a video game, it's just a limiting factor that likely will pre-dispose potential interactions. In ttRPGs people can have an infinite number of reactions and paths forward. In a videogame there's till a finite of hard-coded outcomes.

  • Alignments are only as good as people behind them. It's not alignment's fault when a juvenile edgelord selects Lawful Good and thinks he should still be allowed to lie, cheat, loot and kill like there's no tomorrow.

    • TBH, alignments are, at best, a shorthand for a character's morals, how they'll likely act in a philosophical vacuum as it were; with no context, will they default to upholding the law, or defying it? Helping others, or prioritizing themselves?

      For a cosmological force/extraplanar entity, these things can be absolute and binding; upholding a law they believe unjust because it is law, withholding aid even when offering it might be in your best interest, because kindness is weakness. But for everyday people? Who, why, when, where; all the possible little nuances matter. Our "alignment" might change day by day with our mood.

      Much more useful, IMO, for to just be ignored during character creation, and the characters judged by how they behave. You don't decide ahead of time whether or not you're playing a good character, you show me during the session. That way, it's not words on paper, it's the actual nature of the character you want to play. /shurg

      • TBH, alignments are, at best, a shorthand for a character’s morals, how they’ll likely act in a philosophical vacuum as it were; with no context, will they default to upholding the law, or defying it?

        Absolutely not.

        There are 9 separate alignments, each well covered and presented by D&D and its derivatives like Pathfinder as well as numerous articles and possibly sourcebooks/handbooks. There are suggestions as to how apply each by the DM to his NPCs and how to roleplay one as a PC.

        The problem with alignment stems from people who didn't actually read the books for the games they are playing (not a jab, it's a common attitude - people learn from other people rather than from studying core/sourcebooks). Their understanding of the alignments isn't particularly good. As such they can't properly appply them to their games, so they try and discredit them, usually by using once-in-the-lifetime scenarios that rarely happen if ever at the actual table.

        Our “alignment” might change day by day with our mood.

        Not really, no. It takes a severe physical trauma/farmacology to change the character of a man. Mood might change, patience might fail, but you don't shift from a saint to a murderer overnight. You may walk among your fellow people pretending to be something else than you really are, but the mask isn't your "alignment" and by wearing it you're effectively casting a spell that hides the real you before the eyes of the other people.

        You don’t decide ahead of time whether or not you’re playing a good character, you show me during the session.

        I see no problem in deciding what character I will play before the game begins and trying to "fill the boots" during the session(s).

    • I mean, what about if you want to play an evil character? Being "evil" in many rpg videogames is being a psychopath that kills because they enjoy it, steals when there's no need, and in general does evil for the sake of it. Instead of you making "bad roleplaying choices", it's the game forcing its view of the alignment on you.

      I'm all for a more grey moral system where you can be evil because you do something for personal gain that happens to fuck up a lot of people, or something like that. Not having that is actually the reason I rarely play evil characters in games.

      • Stripping the game off of alignments won't provide you with the options you want.

        Play ttRPGs with DM who allows for such a gameplay and a group that is ok with that.

  • I stopped giving my characters alignments after 5e came out, and I've never once missed them. Safe to say by this point I never will. Good on Larian.

  • Looks like we will not have to pick an alignment. Article says that 5e down played it and WOTC is planning to remove it.

  • 5e barely has an alignment system

19 comments