Alignment Issues

[Curufea]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

The best roleplaying happens when the players feel they are actually "there"

 

If the setting isn't about sociopathic people - your players aren't roleplaying. They're probably videogaming.

[assault]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

Going back to original DnD: there was originally no explanation as to what the three alignments meant. There was, however, a list of the various types of critter in each category. It was a modification of a similar list that appeared in Chainmail.

 

There was a brief comment about how chaotic characters should behave in Supplement 1 - Greyhawk, but frankly it looked more as though alignment was more about how NPCs would react than how PCs should.

 

(Incidentally, Assassins were originally Neutral, not Chaotic.)

 

The distinction between Law/Chaos and Good/Evil was beginning to be made by the time Supplement 3 - Eldritch Wizardry was published, although there were still technically only the three alignments.

 

So what does all this mean? Basically, alignment doesn't originally seem to have been that big a deal. There was good, there was evil, and there were some folks who tended to mind their own business. All the other stuff was bolted on later.

 

This fits fairly well with a Tolkien style set up, and particularly with The Hobbit, where the wood elves pretty well defined "neutral". It doesn't fit many other settings as well, but even in those cases there are usually some unambiguously evil critters running around.

 

As originally portrayed, alignment as a game mechanic has no place in Fantasy Hero.

 

Generally speaking "evil" characters are self-limiting. If they are aligned with a Big Evil Faction, they will be subordinate to that faction's leadership, and good luck to them.

 

If not, they are in a situation of being alone against the world. This is not a recipe for a lengthy lifespan.

 

Alienating your allies is bad. Without allies, you die.

 

---

 

Maybe we should revive the old "wargame" style of campaign. Mindless slashers would quickly find their behaviour penalised by alliances of more diplomatically minded players. This would actually be quite suitable to PBEM, since a lot of the action would be "high-level" rather than individual hack and slash. Hmm...

[David Johnston]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

 

As originally portrayed, alignment as a game mechanic has no place in Fantasy Hero.

 

That would mean Fantasy Hero can't do Three Hearts and Three Lions (Law/Chaos and make no mistake, Chaos is evil) or Witch World (Light/Shadow).

[assault]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

That would mean Fantasy Hero can't do Three Hearts and Three Lions (Law/Chaos and make no mistake' date=' Chaos is evil) or Witch World (Light/Shadow).[/quote']

 

Why?

[David Johnston]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

Why?

 

Because both of them are alignment based. If alignment has no place in Fantasy Hero, then neither can anything approximating a faithful representation of those books.

[Teflon Billy]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

Alignments have a perfectly good place to be had in Fantasy Hero. They are ridiculously easy to add: Physical Limitation (Distinctive Feature: Alignment, noticable by special senses only, etc....) for X number of points.

 

The GM makes it mandatory that a Character have an alignment, he could restrict the choices, he could make it wide open to all alignments, he just has to make sure everybody in the game world has one.

 

BAM! You have alignments in Fantasy Hero, was that so hard?

 

TB

[Kristopher]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

Because both of them are alignment based. If alignment has no place in Fantasy Hero' date=' then neither can anything approximating a faithful representation of those books.[/quote']

 

Whereas I would say that Alignment doesn't do those kinds of ideas justice.

[Kristopher]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

Alignments have a perfectly good place to be had in Fantasy Hero. They are ridiculously easy to add: Physical Limitation (Distinctive Feature: Alignment, noticable by special senses only, etc....) for X number of points.

 

The GM makes it mandatory that a Character have an alignment, he could restrict the choices, he could make it wide open to all alignments, he just has to make sure everybody in the game world has one.

 

BAM! You have alignments in Fantasy Hero, was that so hard?

 

So what if a character has Distinctive Feature: Evil, but behaves in a non-evil manner? It's not as if DF does anything to constrain the behavior of a character in play. That would take a PsychLim or a PhysLim, wouldn't it?

 

If it's only a DF, then we have this odd situation where good and evil aren't about what you do, they're just about what you are.

 

Part of the problem in this discussion is that some people see good and evil as adjectives, or nouns -- things that someone is...while others see those terms as verbs -- things that someone does. IMO, while many people might do evil -- often small evils, sometimes large -- very few people are evil.

[Curufea]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

D&D on the other hand, cannot be used as a faithful representation of any book.

[assault]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

Because both of them are alignment based. If alignment has no place in Fantasy Hero' date=' then neither can anything approximating a faithful representation of those books.[/quote']

 

Nonsense.

 

You are arguing that because a particular mechanism is not obligatory, it is not permitted.

 

Alignment is not part of Fantasy Hero, because it is not required. If a particular campaign needs that kind of effect, that is fine, but has nothing to do with the system itself.

 

I wouldn't use "alignments" to simulate the situation in Three Hearts and Three Lions anyway.

 

It has been a very long time since I read any of the Witch World stuff.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

[cough] http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1162118&postcount=7

[Teflon Billy]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

So what if a character has Distinctive Feature: Evil, but behaves in a non-evil manner? It's not as if DF does anything to constrain the behavior of a character in play. That would take a PsychLim or a PhysLim, wouldn't it?

 

If it's only a DF, then we have this odd situation where good and evil aren't about what you do, they're just about what you are.

 

Part of the problem in this discussion is that some people see good and evil as adjectives, or nouns -- things that someone is...while others see those terms as verbs -- things that someone does. IMO, while many people might do evil -- often small evils, sometimes large -- very few people are evil.

 

I say Physical, but what I really mean is Spiritual Limitation (which I'm pretty sure doesn't exist), which in D&D had aspects that could be said to be all three Physical (Evil people get physically hurt by touching a Holy Avenger sword), Social (If it becomes publicly known that a Character is Evil, not evil, but Detect Alignment and "Yup, he's Evil" people aren't going to like you hanging around), and Psych (inso far as CvK or Honorable are limitations, a personal morality/ethic can be a PsychLim)

 

Which I think adding SpiritualLim, or something similar to genres that have explicit and demonstrable Metaphysical realities could be a benefit to the game.

 

And, just because an Evil person does a good act, does not make them any less Evil. It has to deal with the some total of their acts, beliefs, motivations (primarily their overall motivation for doing things) a AD&D 2nd Ed stuff on it, and a little more flexibly in D&D 3rd Ed. I think 3rd Ed did a better job loosening up some of the language on how alignments should be played out, the descriptions in AD&D 2nd would best be described as being examples of what the most extreme/ascetic adherents of each alignment would profess, not what the normal people who fall with in each spectrum of those alignments.

 

AD&D 2nd Ed descriptions and some rather poor DMing I think is where most people are getting a lot of these problems.

 

It really isn't that hard of a concept, I think some of you are just against because you don't want to see something you perceive as a D&Dism sneaking its way into Hero.

 

There is nothing in the Game that bars alignments, in fact like I said, the Game has facilities to add them that are ridiculously easy. Just like an entire class of beings can have the Distinctive feature "Unholy" and suffer the consequences of that fact in game, even though there is no tangible benefit for it.

 

You have spells (-1/2 Only effects Evil beings) or (-1 Only benefits Lawful Good beings) etc...

 

Alignment becomes a SFX for a bunch of powers/spells/magic/environment of the Universe, coupled with a couple of roleplaying strictures that the player agrees to take when they choose their alignment at character creation.

 

Depending on how adamant the GM is about characters sticking to their alignment, he can be laize faire and let them switch back and forth but just require that they have some sort of alignment (and probably demand that they at least settle on one after a while) or he could give them warning that they weren't living up to their alignment and if they don't smarten up there will be consequences, and if they don't they get docked the cost of the alignment distinctive feature and the GM assigns the player the alignment that the player was actually roleplaying in game. Both extremes, but both I'm sure have come up in games, certainly has to have come up in Supers games with characters with CvK not living up to that alignment restriction.

 

What I hated more was WW Humanity, now that was an alignment system that was screwed up. They set you up as cold blooded killers, and in general amoral people, but if you act to save your own skin you can lose Humanity and come closer to losing you character from play completely. Even in AD&D, you could still play your character perfectly well if he went from Chaotic Good, to Chaotic Evil, he just wasn't going to get along with the Paladin in the party

 

TB

[Teflon Billy]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

[cough] http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1162118&postcount=7

 

Which is exactly the alignment system I plan to use if I ever have a AD&D Hero game. Or I'm thinking of incorporating it into my home brew game, just for some flavor.

 

TB

[Kristopher]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

I object to alignment systems because I find them fake, artificial, and very untrue to reality, not simply because they're so associated with D&D.

 

The idea of alignment is an appeal to the notion that people are Evil or Good, which is so very rarely the case. Via the idea that alignment -- morality, ethics, etc -- is a quality, something that can be detected and measured, it's an appeal to the desire for things to be simple -- for it to be easy to tell who is good and who is bad.

 

It's not easy to tell who's good and who's bad in real life. Even the people who most of us would agree were evil were often loved by millions, and some of them still are.

[Teflon Billy]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

I object to alignment systems because I find them fake, artificial, and very untrue to reality, not simply because they're so associated with D&D.

 

The idea of alignment is an appeal to the notion that people are Evil or Good, which is so very rarely the case. Via the idea that alignment -- morality, ethics, etc -- is a quality, something that can be detected and measured, it's an appeal to the desire for things to be simple -- for it to be easy to tell who is good and who is bad.

 

It's not easy to tell who's good and who's bad in real life. Even the people who most of us would agree were evil were often loved by millions, and some of them still are.

This is something that needs to move to the NGD, and isn't what the original poster or I am talking about.

 

I don't care if others think alignments are silly or unrealistic, the question asked and what some of us are trying to answer is "How do you implement Alignments in Fantasy Hero?"

 

So, if you want to talk about whether or not objective morality exists, by all means start a thread over in the NGD.

 

I'm going to continue to discuss the relative merits of an Alignment system based on SFX and Physical Limitations.

 

TB

[David Johnston]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

Nonsense.

 

You are arguing that because a particular mechanism is not obligatory, it is not permitted.

 

No, I'm not. "Alignment has no place in Fantasy Hero" is not a statement that "alignment is not obligatory". It's a statement that you should never use alignment in Fantasy Hero.

 

So what if a character has Distinctive Feature: Evil, but behaves in a non-evil manner?

 

The same thing that happens if he circumvents any other disadvantage. First the GM says, "Hey, what's the deal?". Then if no reasonable explanation is forthcoming (Like: This is all part of my cunning scheme to win the trust of those fools before I stab them in the back.), the disadvantage must be bought off or replaced with another disadvantage like "Distinctive Feature: Good.".

 

The idea of alignment is an appeal to the notion that people are Evil or Good,

 

Or of course something in between, since I've never yet seen an alignment system that didn't have a middle ground.

[Kristopher]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

This is something that needs to move to the NGD, and isn't what the original poster or I am talking about.

 

I don't care if others think alignments are silly or unrealistic, the question asked and what some of us are trying to answer is "How do you implement Alignments in Fantasy Hero?"

 

So, if you want to talk about whether or not objective morality exists, by all means start a thread over in the NGD.

 

I'm going to continue to discuss the relative merits of an Alignment system based on SFX and Physical Limitations.

 

How exactly are we to impliment alignment when we have not even figured out what it really is? The questions I'm asking are entirely relevent to that unanswered question.

 

Without answering those questions, how do we know whether to use Distinctive Feature, Psychological Limitation, or both, or something else?

 

I'd seriously question the basic assumptions of a setting in which human or human-like PCs were required to take Physical Limit: Insert Alignment Here.

 

And I think a setting in which you can look at someone, mutter a spell to yourself, and know without a doubt that they're evil, is one missing a lot of nuance and potential for plots, for characters...and for stories involving more than The Battle of Good vs Evil.

[Kristopher]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

So what if a character has Distinctive Feature: Evil' date=' but behaves in a non-evil manner?[/b']

 

The same thing that happens if he circumvents any other disadvantage. First the GM says, "Hey, what's the deal?". Then if no reasonable explanation is forthcoming (Like: This is all part of my cunning scheme to win the trust of those fools before I stab them in the back.), the disadvantage must be bought off or replaced with another disadvantage like "Distinctive Feature: Good."

 

But in the case in question, no one is circumventing a Disadvantage. He still shows up as "EVIL" when detection spells and such are used, and DFs don't restrict behavior.

 

Compare this with a superheroic character who gained his powers because of an encounter with the demonic...he has DF: Demonic Aura, but this in no way requires him to behave as a demon would, does it?

[David Johnston]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

But in the case in question, no one is circumventing a Disadvantage. He still shows up as "EVIL" when detection spells and such are used, and DFs don't restrict behavior.

 

 

Sure they do. Behaviour can BE a distinctive feature. And if your DF is "Looking like a mad scientist complete with lab coat and Einstein hair" then in order to live up to it, you have to avoid combs, haircuts and wear a lab coat whenever possible. In this case, if you behave in a consistently good fashion because you want to, you seem to have gotten a hair cut and forgotten your lab coat. That not to say that people can't ping as evil when really they are good. There are a multitude of plot devices that can explain a false positive, not least of which is the Evil senser failing his perception roll.

[Kristopher]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

At the very least, I hope those who wish to impliment some kind of alignment system in a fantasy HERO game will take into consideration the questions and issues I've been raising as they're working out how they're going to do it.

[Curufea]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

What I hated more was WW Humanity, now that was an alignment system that was screwed up. They set you up as cold blooded killers, and in general amoral people, but if you act to save your own skin you can lose Humanity and come closer to losing you character from play completely. Even in AD&D, you could still play your character perfectly well if he went from Chaotic Good, to Chaotic Evil, he just wasn't going to get along with the Paladin in the party

 

TB

 

Plus some of the applications are counter-intuitive and just plain don't make sense in some circumstances. It's a poorly thought out mechanic.

[assault]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

No, I'm not. "Alignment has no place in Fantasy Hero" is not a statement that "alignment is not obligatory". It's a statement that you should never use alignment in Fantasy Hero.

 

If you say so...

 

 

 

On a less trivial note, I've just finished skimming through Three Hearts and Three Lions again. I didn't see any good reason to implement a game-mechanical alignment system.

 

The most interesting effects are those of holy symbols, names etc on soulless/faerie critters. The one time where this failed for Holger Danske was when he was thinking impure thoughts and not carrying cold iron.

 

If you did want a mechanism to handle this, I would suggest considering the Piety stat described in Scott Bennie's conversion notes for his Testament game:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39605

[MektonZ]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

In my game' date=' your alignment will definitely carry consequences. For example, evil characters entering most towns will almost certainly be persecuted or at least heavily monitored. Likewise, good characters encroaching into "evil" lands will be particularly sought after by their residents.[/quote']

 

Do people walk around in your fantasy world carrying large signs proclaiming their alignment? One dusty guy riding into town on a horse looks much like another until they get famous enough that wanted posters start getting spread all over the region. Even that might not even be possible if the game takes place in a world where there are no printing presses. In addition, most crimes are going to be local and anyone looking for them is not going to look far due to the cost involved.

 

In my game, if you really want to be evil, you can be. You want to murder children? Go for it!

Evil does not mean stupid. While an Evil person mignt not have any moral reservations about killing a child in broad daylight on a crowded street; they are fully aware that such actions have negative consequences that far outweigh the few moments of pleasure such an act might give them.

 

Just beware that officers of the law (and possibly Heaven) will be on your trail!

Heavenly retribution? If such things actually happened, do you honestly think that anyone on the entire planet would risk being obliterated by a celestial being by deliberately being evil? The only "evil" on the planet would either be whatever petty crime that heaven allows to happen or crimes of passion. And if the angels are coming down to Earth to personally hand out retribution, there certainly won't be any need for a mere mortal hero to aspire to anything more glorious than to join the local town watch and keep the drunks out of the streets.

 

As for law enforcement officials, I wouldn't count them as too effective as long as the Evil guy is careful about witnesses. 12 years before the start of the 20th century a guy managed to kill 5 women in the same neighborhood in a period of just over 2 months without ever being caught or even indentified.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

I object to alignment systems because I find them fake, artificial, and very untrue to reality, not simply because they're so associated with D&D.

 

The idea of alignment is an appeal to the notion that people are Evil or Good, which is so very rarely the case. Via the idea that alignment -- morality, ethics, etc -- is a quality, something that can be detected and measured, it's an appeal to the desire for things to be simple -- for it to be easy to tell who is good and who is bad.

 

It's not easy to tell who's good and who's bad in real life. Even the people who most of us would agree were evil were often loved by millions, and some of them still are.

 

That's not really so much an objection to alignment per se, as an objection to the ability to detect alignment. If you simply prohibit detection of alignment, you have solved the "detection and measured" issue. A Hero character can, under the rules, purchase a Detect Evil or Detect Good power. He could add some other modifiers like Discriminatory or Analyze, and be capable of setting out a character's moral outlook.

 

Similarly, nothing prevents him from purchasing Detect Codes of Honor, or Detect Code vs Killing. Detect Psychological Limitations, discretionary, analyze would give you a pretty fair sense of your target's moral beliefs and outlooks, especially when you realize nothing in that power description says you don't detect 0 point disadvantages that aso define the character. These personality traits are also not really detectable and measurable in the real world.

[Kristopher]

Re: Alignment Issues

 

That's not really so much an objection to alignment per se, as an objection to the ability to detect alignment. If you simply prohibit detection of alignment, you have solved the "detection and measured" issue. A Hero character can, under the rules, purchase a Detect Evil or Detect Good power. He could add some other modifiers like Discriminatory or Analyze, and be capable of setting out a character's moral outlook.

 

Similarly, nothing prevents him from purchasing Detect Codes of Honor, or Detect Code vs Killing. Detect Psychological Limitations, discretionary, analyze would give you a pretty fair sense of your target's moral beliefs and outlooks, especially when you realize nothing in that power description says you don't detect 0 point disadvantages that aso define the character. These personality traits are also not really detectable and measurable in the real world.

 

I don't think I'd allow those Detects either, both because of the game-ruining possibilities, and because they're cheaper ways to accomplish what's normally done with Mental Powers, usually Telepathy.