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#1 vonklaude Jul 24, 2007 5:01:05

This is a view I came to painstakingly via argument in other threads on the What's a DM to do? forum. I feel it is a good view that helps you to run your game. 1) Take a mystical approach to alignment, in keeping with the setting. Alignment is a mysterious attribute of things, possibly connected to a soul, or possibly not. Being mysterious means it is inexplicable. It is therefore not reducible by reasoning in the ordinary scientific sense that we are used to applying. 'Mystical' is 'right' for a fantasy setting based on medieval Europe, and covers all D&D phenomena without exceptions. 2) In short: Alignment is a detectable compulsion to act a certain way. 3) Alignment is objective, not subjective. An entity's feelings about their intent to harm doesn't change their intent from an intent to harm. Cultures can arise whose members experience the same feelings from their intents to harm as good people in other cultures experience from their intents to help. Nonetheless, an intent to harm is Evil, and an intent to help is Good. 4) Players are not permitted to exploit alignment, so look for consistency between what players do and the motives they say they are following. Apply this principle to any aspect of RP. If Bob tells you that his character 'Flora' loves flowers, then look for Flora to show some appreciation of flowers. 5) Players, societies, NPCs, and nearly all entities can contain tensions and contradictions in their alignment behaviour. This is mandated by RAW, but even if it wasn't it promotes good gameplay. Many storytellers use precisely these tools to good effect; It's when your Lawful NPC breaks the law that your story comes to life and players start to wonder what's going to happen. As Gyrofthewastes said You do have instances where an individual begins engaging in behaviors that are merely risky, or perhaps detrimental to others in a way that is not clearly apparent. The character may still have the noblest [or ignoblest] of intentions in employing such measures and yet by employing them cause consistent suffering [or weal]. RAW authorises alignment fluctuation in the actions expressed by an entity without mandating an immediate change of their internal detectable alignment. 6) Experience of actions, even those of others, can affect alignment. Now in the case of PCs you shouldn't let NPC actions change their alignment except perhaps in backstory or RP, but the reverse is certainly true. Good examples can lead to NPCs changing their minds. RAW hints at this. And RAW is clear that one's own actions feedback into alignment, in part to prevent player exploits. 7) That said, follow the definitions laid out in the books. Don't add anything to them, or take anything away, but exploit them to create an interesting and consistent game world. For example, don't assume 'Lawful' necessitates having laws, despite the nomenclature. The 'Lawful' alignment description in RAW doesn't mandate a written legal system, and that gives you freedom to mix things up a little. 8) On animals and automata, read the line as a whole. Things 'incapable of moral action' cannot be non-Neutral. Simply being 'incapable of action' has no effect on alignment. ------------------------- The most unpalatable consequences of this view are, I think, the following: a) Babies have alignment even while they are incapable of obviously purposeful action. That isn't how we modern people view infants, is it?! In such times and places as our fantasy uses as a point of reference, babies were often thought to be born Evil, and only through work and devotion to be capable of becoming good. It would have been odd (back then) to imagine newborns to be Neutral. The way to use this in your game, consistent with RAW, is to include babies in the general alignment demographic of their genetic population and then allow nurture to move them toward the alignment demographic of their cultural population. An orc raised among humans is more likely to be CE than a human, but less likely to be CE than if raised among orcs. b) An entity can be aligned without having (yet) taken any alignment related actions. That sounds terrible, doesn't it?! Yet the converse is no more helpful. Let's consider cases: An entity acts first, and that creates in them a compulsion to act similarly next time? Or: An entity acts, sans compulsion: so alignment only means actions? The first case is going to eventually put a compulsion before an action, if only the next action, and in the second case where does the consistency come from? The best alternate view would seem to be 'Action and compulsion occur simultaneously', but what gameplay advantage do any of these views buy us over putting compulsion first? On the other hand, all these views run into trouble with things (for example, in the MM) that are born non-Neutrally aligned (especially the 'Often' creatures such as Giants, which aren't Outsiders or particularly weird) and the 'action requirement' has trouble with things that can't act but are aligned. You would be forced to make at least some exceptions, but there is no need to if you take the view proposed; and the gameplay is as good or better. c) Doesn't this go against DMG134?! The answer is to read that section as being about what it is entitled, i.e. Changing Alignments. It doesn't tell you how an entity gets their alignment in the first place, but does tell you a lot of things about how alignment is maintained, especially for PCs. It gives you a variety of tools for alignment change, from instant to gradual. These all work fine under the tenets above. d) But you want your game to be black-and-white!! You want your players to know who to hit and when to do it, no questions asked. Okay; in this case the tenets above for a mystical understanding of alignment are not for you. You are better off saying Evil creatures have already, when first encountered, acted evilly. ------------------------- In play, a mystical understanding of alignment as laid out here will let you do the following, and more... ==Your paladins get more use from their Detect Evil, because you can have more evil around that they will usefully know to distrust, but that have not yet committed evil acts needing a smite. This protracts the engagement between Good and Evil, which is good for both adventuring and RP. ==Sight-and-smite is out the window. Paladins need to put a little more work in. ==You can choose more freely between alignment-hiding magic or bald-facedly bluffing, even when your PCs have recourse to Detect spells. For example, a high-level civil servant may Detect as Evil, but being Lawful they have (thus far) served their polity well, even if ruthlessly. You can let your players know they are Evil - now they know to distrust him - but that they need a better solution than 'kill it' this time. ==Since Evil entities might not yet have acted evil, the challenge can be laid down to Good entities to redeem them. If they must have acted evil, then it is a longer stretch to find the tolerance to do this. ==You can use the full flavour available in the mix of alignments listed under community demographics, without all the Evils having to hide under cloaking devices. 'A Neutral. Yep, another Neutral. Neutral too. Guess what? Neutral' etc. Good societies can contain evil groups that everybody knows about, but that are furtive enough to get away with their badness. We're pretty sure they poisoned Gran's cow, but we're not certain... ==You know why skeletons conjured up to row a boat still Detect as Evil. Given a chance, these entities will do evil. This isn't a complete list. In particular there are some esoteric gameplay possibilities available. For example, your paladin discovers that the heir to the throne (new born) Detects as Evil. What does she do about it? Or conversely, your anti-paladin discovers that the (new born) first daughter of the Chiefteness is Good, but the Chiefteness is delighted to have a girl-child and will kill out of hand any of her minions that harm her. I don't put this as the only way to play alignment. But rather as a good way that as near as I can make it is consistent with RAW and asks for few assumptions and no exceptions. I hope it helps your game. -vk Note: I don't give all the examples, counter-examples, etc from RAW here, even though there are plenty available. Only if begged will I spend that amount of time (yours and mine) on this write-up.