Alignment

[JustKneller]

I'm True Neutral, the name of my Alignment says it all, dude, it's the only alignment that has "True" in the name.

It maybe it's overcompensating? Like, when people start a sentence with "Honestly," it usually means they're lying about something.

 

[JustKneller]

And Merry Xmas to all and to all a good game!

 

[BelgarathMTH]

I like to analyze what D&D alignments fictional and historical characters might be as much as any D&D fan, because it's fun, but I think all this trying to shoehorn Christian theology and cosmology into D&D cosmology is in error and misguided.

Christianity is an extremely dualistic religion - either Good OR Evil, no in-between, either God OR Satan; and monotheistic - Satan only exists or has any power because God allows it. There is no in-between other than perhaps the Catholic idea of Purgatory, and Protestants are going to have a problem with that, i.e. there's no such thing as Purgatory to a Protestant theologian or believer. There is no God but God. Other gods do not exist - they are idolatrous made-up creations of misguided and evil humans.

D&D is polytheistic in its fantasy religion and moral system to the core. Many gods representing many alignments demonstrably exist and grant favor and power to their followers who please them. It's fantasy. (I'd say all real-life religion is fantasy, too, of a different kind, but that's another discussion.)

Christianity is an either-or religion, not a spectrum of possible alignments. Either you are a follower of Christ and depend on Him for your salvation into Heaven, or you are doomed to Hell. Following and believing in Christ and His grace is Good. Not following Christ, or phrased the other way around, following and believing in anything but Christ, makes you Evil, because all humans are Evil by nature and by default, ever since the Fall, and only Christ can save us, change our base natures, and bring us to God's Goodness, from which we are separated.

Fantasy religion and morality are interesting, but I don't think we can try to apply them to real-life theology, philosophy, ethics, or character analysis and expect to be taken seriously.

 

[m7600]

@BelgarathMTH what alignment is Batman, in your opinion? I think he's Neutral Good.

 

[BelgarathMTH]

@BelgarathMTH what alignment is Batman, in your opinion? I think he's Neutral Good.

It depends on which version of Batman, doesn't it? I seem to remember seeing one of those meme charts where somebody put different versions of him into all nine alignments.

 

[m7600]

You mean this one?

The Meme Thread

tavernrpg.com

I mean, the Adam West version of Batman seems Lawful Good. The Christopher Nolan Batman leans more towards Neutral Good. The thing with Batman, and with any vigilante character (in fact, with any superhero character) is, that by definition, they can't be Lawful. Technically, they can't, they're doing frontier justice. And that's not Lawful. At the most, it's Neutral, if not outright Chaotic.

As to Batman's moral values, I think he's good. I mean, he's a superhero, and superheroes are good by definition. Except for Frank Castle (the Punisher). That guy is even worse than Batman. He's like Batman on "moral steroids". I'd argue that the Punisher is not a hero, he's an anti-hero.

 

[m7600]

And Merry Xmas to all and to all a good game!

Happy Holidays!

 

[m7600]

I'd argue that the Punisher is not a hero, he's an anti-hero.

I'll try to be more specific here. I'm not saying that the following applies to all anti-heroes, but I think it applies to The Punisher:

1) On the Law-Neutral-Chaos Axis, he's Chaotic, IMO. It just makes no sense to say that he's Lawful. He's killing people in the name of the law. And that's not what the actual law says that you can do. So, he's Chaotic.
2) On the Good-Neutral-Evil Axis, he's Neutral. He can't be good, because someone who kills people in the name of the law cannot be good, by definition. Does that make him evil? Not necessarily. He's fighting evil with vigilantism. That makes him Neutral, IMO.
3) So, from (1) and (2), it follows that Frank Castle (The Punisher) is Chaotic Neutral.

 

[m7600]

On a side note, my weekly Pathfinder group doesn't have a GM at the moment, so we're rotating the GM role among the players. This week it's my turn to be the GM. The problem is, that my players want to play an Evil campaign. So for example, two of the players have already made their characters with me during Session Zero. Get this (and I couldn't believe it myself) one of them wants to play a Chaotic-Evil Anti-Paladin, and the other one wants to play a Neutral Evil Necromancer. There's a third player that, when he heard this, told me that his character is going to be a Drow of some Evil alignment and class.

I need tips, @JustKneller , @BelgarathMTH, @OrlonKronsteen and @Black Elk . What, exactly, am I supposed to do here? How do you even run an Evil campaign? They're not some run-of-the-mill group of adventurers that turned into murder-hobos, they want to start an actual Evil campaign and I'm not sure I'm up for that. I mean, I'll do one or a few sessions, but that's it, that's the campaign. I'm not going to spend a year on this, not even half a year. For that, I prefer a campaign tailored to Good and Neutral characters.

 

[m7600]

And I'd argue with @BelgarathMTH on the following point:

Fantasy religion and morality are interesting, but I don't think we can try to apply them to real-life theology, philosophy, ethics, or character analysis and expect to be taken seriously.

Maybe not, maybe I won't be taken seriously. But I will say this: I truly, honestly believe, that D&D morals (Good / Neutral / Evil) are better than Christian morals (Good / Evil). Why? Because in morals, a spectrum of options is better than just two options. Immanuel Kant's ethical concept of the categorical imperative, and the ethics that follow from it, have more in common with D&D than with Christianity. That's just a fact. You said it yourself: in Christianity, there are only two moral values: Good and Evil. Kant says they're three: Good, Neutral, Evil. D&D says they're three: Good, Neutral, Evil. Therefore, Kantian ethics has more things in common with D&D ethics than with Christian ethics.

Does that make sense to you?

 

[m7600]

Man, between the D&D stuff and the Straight Edge stuff, this just turned into Sunday school.

 

[JustKneller]

I need tips, @JustKneller , @BelgarathMTH, @OrlonKronsteen and @Black Elk . What, exactly, am I supposed to do here? How do you even run an Evil campaign?

Been there. The easy answer is to set something in Menzoberranzan. Evil drow trying to usurp from other evil drow, that kind of thing. I've done this before, but it was with good gamers who aren't murderhobos so it played well. It can be tough if you have shitty players, though.

If you want to be clever, you can make them the BBEG of a campaign, let them terrorize the land, run whatever scheme they want, and then it ends when a group of plucky heroes swoops in and TPKs the lot of them.

 

[Black Elk]

I wow that sounds like a fun path to find! I agree with JustKneller, might put the focus on the place, cause if you can bake the evil into the setting a bit that way it maybe gives the players more room to spread their wings. Like if the game master can sorta kick it off, having something very wicked happen to the party (or party adjacent) like right at the start, just to set the pace on it a bit? That might be cool. I think the key for me when dealing with Evil, is that I think most players (or at least for me) don't want play it full Evil the whole time necessarily, but more to fight fire with fire, or battle darkness by going even darker when the situations call for it. Evil is sorta more entertaining when operating against other Evil I think, than in the cosmic bout down with Good. Probably my go to do, if not Dune Prophecy, might be like that Prophecy flick with Christopher Walken from the late 90s? You know where all the bit player fallen angels are arguing amongst themselves, everyone trying to backstab or work an angle that way. I guess what I mean is that for me, the best part of villainy is that you know the other characters will be willing to do whatever it takes. You don't have to waste time on reluctant hero stuff, when its already full spoon like the Sharrif of Nottingham in prince of thieves. But giving 'em chances to back each other up and play it smart, but still be villainous. The intraparty jockeying for leadership or control obliquely, instead of trying to put em at odds with each other too much. Or to let them do team Evil vs other Evil for a while. Villains are always more amusing when they've got a good sense of black humor, so maybe having some heroes along the way who just make bad decisions, and to demonstrate that being Good doesn't pay lol. Just leave room for like the casual kleptomania and to make whatever Paladins the chaotic Anti-Paladin is gunning after also have enough charlatan to whatever they're up to to make Good seem obtuse. Like given em a good disembler to go after maybe, who's clearly evil but good presenting, so they can shore that one up? I like that idea of just letting them run wild on the terror too if that's their thing. Though I think a fun riff would be where the plucky heroes somehow fall short - on account of the Necromancy.

Or maybe even reverse it? Say where they get TPK'd right at the outset, but then the dark arts do that second chance skeleton hehe. I don't know it's been a while for me honestly. Kind of a tall order probably, but deep diving on the Drow couldn't hurt. It's a cool backdrop to just go super low hehe

 

[OrlonKronsteen]

What, exactly, am I supposed to do here? How do you even run an Evil campaign? They're not some run-of-the-mill group of adventurers that turned into murder-hobos, they want to start an actual Evil campaign and I'm not sure I'm up for that. I mean, I'll do one or a few sessions, but that's it, that's the campaign. I'm not going to spend a year on this, not even half a year. For that, I prefer a campaign tailored to Good and Neutral characters.

I think you've answered your own question - if you're not up for it, you're not up for it. Nothing wrong with that.

But you did ask how, so... Whether it's doable comes down to the players, as @JustKneller points out. Do they really want to play D&D, or just be shit disturbers? If they really want to play without being mere saboteurs and RL assholes, it can be quite fun. They just need well thought-out characters, who aren't too evil (for evil's own sake), and who are still motivated to work with others.

You kind of end up full circle - asking that basic question of what alignment means again. It can be open to interpretation, unless the GM is determined to reduce each alignment to the stereotypical examples in the Players Handbook. E.g., 'blood-thirsty buccaneers are an example of chaotic evil characters,' ergo a CE character must be a psychotic murderhobo. Well, I once played a character whose sheet read 'CE.' She was addicted to chaos, acted impulsively, etc., to some degree. She was selfish, and would steal and engage in conflict when it suited her agenda - all to the extent that CE was intuitively fitting to me. However, she was also affectionate, loved animals, and, if a school bus was on fire (terrible D&D example, I know, but all I can think of ATM) she'd probably risk her life to save the kids. So in my thinking, a character can land at different places on each scale of law-chaos, and good-evil.

 

[m7600]

Thanks for the replies, folks!

The Chaotic Evil Anti-Paladin is the most mind-boggling one so far. Let me give a bit of context. That player likes to make problematic characters. As in, he plays assholeishly IRL, he gets some sort of kick out of it. For example, he likes sabotaging the story, so he messes both with the other players and with whoever happens to be the GM for that session.

So, -with that in mind-, this dude tells me that he wants his next character to be an Anti-Paladin (which isn't in the Pathfinder basic rulebooks that we're using), and that he wants to be Chaotic Evil. He says that he has the perfect excuse. His character, technically being a Paladin, as in, a sword-wielding crusader with divine magic powers, can invoke the religious notion that he, as a holy man, serves Evil and Chaos. Therefore, he wants the habits and beliefs of his character to fall under the concept of religious tolerance. Like, the adventuring party goes to the city, and the Anti-Paladin tells the city guard that he's there to spread the message of Chaos and Evil in both Word and Deed. And that if he's met with resistance, he'll take that as religious discrimination.

This is what I have to deal with, as a GM. From a purely technical standpoint it's the stuff of nightmares. I'd just say "look man, a Paladin can only be Lawful Good. Your character sounds stupid. Make another one."

But I'm not gonna do that, I'm just gonna GM one session of this and then we'll see.

 

[m7600]

Maybe I could just make a run-of-the-mill Session One in Planescape, particularly Sigil, and call it a day. But the problem is that we're playing Pathfinder, so unfortunately the story is going to have to take place somewhere in Golarion (the Paizo equivalent of D&D's Toril).

 

[JustKneller]

I've had to deal with that player, and more than once, sadly. I've found only only solution to that situation.

1. Let player make whatever character they want.
2. Tell them to find another group that will let them play that way.
3.???
4. Profit!!!

 

[m7600]

Now I'm trying to find some official module published by Paizo for Pathfinder, some official Lvl 1-4 campaign for Evil characters, but I can't find anything even remotely decent.

 

[m7600]

And I have to do all this before Friday, lol. Yeah this is a classic "I won't allow it" GM kind of moment. But here's the thing, my players are GMs themselves as well, occasionally. The group has its "official" GM if you want to call him that, but right now he can't GM due to a change in his work schedule. So we're just rotating the GM role every week. And it's a different story every week. So, this friend of mine who wants to play the Chaotic Evil Anti-Paladin, sometimes GMs and he's quite good at it, actually. Like, not assholeish at all as a DM, he's just an asshole as a player, lol. And he knows it, and he tries to "game the system" with it (if you will), just to see how far his nonsense actually tracks. It falls dead on its tracks whenever he tries that nonsense POV against me though, and he learned that point quite early on in our games.

 

[m7600]

So, I guess the basic philosophical question at the base of this discussion is the following one:

What is Alignment?

It's hard to say. Here's what I believe:

1) The Good-Neutral-Evil axis is the moral part.
2) The Law-Neutral-Chaos axis is the ethical part.

Together, they entail something, but I'm not quite sure what that would be. An ontology? A metaphysics? A bunch of religions? Polytheism?

Ok, let's go with that last riff, "Polytheism". Is that how one would describe D&D's Cosmogony and Cosmology? I'm not so sure. Remember that in D&D, unlike real life, there are Overgods. By definition, those are not gods. Think of Lord Ao, for example, or The Lady of Pain, or The Highlord, or Thoon. Those are not deities. They're something above the concept of a god. So what would you call those, @BelgarathMTH ? What real world analogy could one even establish between those D&D Overgods and some counterpart in the religions and spiritual beliefs that real world people have? Is Nature, for example, an Overgod by definition? As in, Gaia. I would argue (hypothetically) that if Jesus is God, then Gaia is an Over-"God". Does that make sense to you?