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My fav character arc was in Star Wars, Clone Wars era, wjere they went from a fairly uninterested, basic Neutral Good sort, straight through to a full heel-turn Chaotic Evil who swore to rid the galaxy of all Force users (freedom from those who would use their powers over us all), but was fiercely loyal to her friends and crew, minus the jedi PC who was in part the reason for her descent into evil, but also she had conflicting feelings for as a person, and surpressed those feelings into more frustration and rage. She died confronting Count Dooku on Geonosis, where she had been left behind while the PCs were off on a mission and had decided to betray the CIS and back the Republicans.
I used to do something called "Apparent alignment" which is basically how the character is perceived and "true alignment" which is often only discernible by magic or divine means. This can lead to fun things like the players being sure the necromancer is Evil but then having to rethink their opinion when he ran and hid inside of a temple that had a ward that kept evil people from walking into it. Then the priest who gave them the quest to eliminate the necromancer wouldn't cross the warded threshold. Basically use alignment but break and shake assumptions.
The old Vampire the Masquerade had Nature (Your true alignment) and Demeanor (How you portrayed yourself to others) that would allow you to hide your true motives and intentions from others. If both were the same it meant your character didn't pretend to be something they aren't as the their outward demeanor reflected their inner nature.
In my experience, Lawful Evil is a lot more manageable than Chaotic Evil, because LE lends itself very nicely to the "loyal to my friends, brutal to my enemies" much better.
Probably depends on how we're defining law/chaos. I tend to envision LE as more goal oriented and CE as more family oriented. An evil biker gang I would classify as CE. "The bigger picture doesn't matter, what matters is you don't fuck with us"
Came to the comments for proof that Alignment is a stupid thing that no one even agrees on, so we shouldn't bother assigning it to our characters, and I struck gold.
@@Timonsaylor What activities would that evil biker gang be participating in if they were left to get on with their own wishes without being interfered with?
@@presetregret184 Alignment shouldn't be assigned to characters, they should earn it by their actions being assessed against the alignment archtypes. It could be that only the DM tracks it, the players just get their characters to act as they want.
I'm old, so maybe my memory is off, but all the way back in AD&D DMG there was an entire write up of a party of 9 characters, one of each alignment, trying to do a task and it was ridiculous in its rigid adherence to the letter of the alignment...including the CN character just running screaming into certain death because they were "crazy". The LE character wanted to negotiate (like a devil) and the TN character contemplated the universe before doing anything. I think stuff like that from older versions combined with the penalty for switching alignment made players at the time not only blindly stick to alignment, it codified them into very narrow lanes and a lot of that still carries over to today. Paladins players played their character as Lawful Stupid because they didn't want their DMs to accuse them of not being LG and effectively destroy their character.
1E and 2E alignment was played alot of stay in your lane. And it was one of the things which should have been a Session 0 discussions. Lots of people took alignment to be a pill (PROBLEM). And DMs would also be a pill. Hey Peter Parker Purple Paladin of Pittsburg you come to an intersection. on the left is a burning orphanage, on the right is old lady about to get ran over what do you do? It didn't matter BOOM Change of Alignment, level, and lost of paladinhood. I used to tell my players alignment is sixth or seventh on your list of things to worry about or stick too.
@@RottenRogerDM but I do think TSR themselves caused the issue by so rigidly defined alignment in the DMG. Lawful Good _was_ Lawful Stupid because that;s how it was described in the DMG, whereas today LG is not about strict adherence to the letter of the law like a crazy, 2H sword wielding pedant. 😉 EDIT: I found the text, I'm shocked I remembered the "9 alignment party" as accurately as I did. Here's the first few sentences AD&D's Lawful Good: "Characters of this alignment believe that an orderly, strong society with a well-organized government can work to make life better for the majority of the people. To ensure the quality of life, laws must be created and obeyed." Most tables wouldn't accept that this is LG in 5e, most see "Lawful" as a set of beliefs, not adhering to the law.
The two are not mutually exclusive, the a-hole character just gets assassinated in the mission after the "it's what my character would do" comment, good/bad/neutral they are still getting assassinated for being an a-hole player (playing the a-hole character)
I don't ban alignments. If alignment comes up I simply don't use the D&D alignments. I address everything by the colors of mana from Magic the Gathering. "Why can't I play an evil alignment?" "You can play into your black mana leanings as hard as you want. Just make sure you have a reason for playing nice with the party. You need them to achieve your ambitions." "Why can't I play chaotic neutral?" "Red mana is a great motivator for your character. Just make sure your character is enough of a functioning adult that they would have survived up to this point and not been murdered by the barbarian tribe or goblin warren you crawled out of." "I'm the most lawful and goodest of all the lawful good paladins to ever paladin. No evil will escape might righteous judgment." "Listen, I don't have a problem with white mana, but you can't use obvious fascist talking points to get your way in the game world. There's a hundred reasons why the church of Pholtus, the Azorius Senate, and the Mercy Killers are the bad guys in all my campaigns."
I'm one of those DMs that didn't allow CN for the longest time. There had been too many experiences with players that looked at the description for the alignment and decided that allowed them to be unhinged. I agree that the core issue is the player, but, no other alignment really encouraged the dipshittery as much as CN (in my experience). I completely agree that in session zero it's extremely important to hammer home the importance of having a character concept that is conducive to team play. Regarding Lawful Good, I have long appreciated the saying, "It's Lawful Good, not Lawful Stupid." Good video, Mike.
Alignment is an excellent worldbuilding and character design tool. I cannot be convinced otherwise, as it's been a smash success at my tables for the entirety of my TTRPG experience (~4 years).
I allow any alignment the players want as long as the characters all have a reason to move in the same general direction. I trust my players to think of reasons as to why their characters would stay together even if they may have differences. Edit: and I don't typically play with people I don't trust in this way. If it's a new person I'll be super clear on what is expected so no one is blindsided and what will happen if expectations aren't met. That kinda sounded more sinister than I meant. Lol
I'm currently playing a CE character in a morally neutral adventure campaign. Chaotic evil doesn't have to mean disruptive. My character is unpleasant, but i got everyone's consent for that before I brought her to the table. We're in a segment where my CE character is being recruited by the party, and the progression is the party will be helping me with something as a favor, i return it by joining the party, and over time, these disparate characters become "her" people (think Greed from Fullmetal Alchemist)
I have a Lawful Good paladin who drinks heavily, and is bloody brutal in fights, but is still kind and just. Alignment is not a straitjacket, it is a shorthand reference for a character's moral and ethical outlook and beliefs. I use it as a guideline for roleplay and am confused at why so many people are against it nowadays. That said great video, a share a lot of you content with friends to help them understand more esoteric parts of D&D
I don't like alignment in general, mostly because I find it leads to static characters. But I want to see characters having an arc to become something different than they started as. Like you said, people excuse their character'S behaviour no matter the alignment, and will play then just a single track mind that is not going to change. And alignment had also been a tool to punish players with forced alignment changes and repercussions of that in previous editions, thus teaching even more to stick to a static character.
@@HankHill11 Don't ask me, I have not written those useless rules. It was a punishment because there was things like level loss and such involved. Also magic items and certain classes also had alignment prerequisites which meant the character got crippled if they got their alignment changed. Th whole system was set up that people did not wanted to change their alignment and thus there was no incentive to become a better person or things like that which we see with character arcs.
It only leads to static characters becausw people cant comprehend thst their are different flavors of law chaos good evil and nuetrality. There are mutiple ways to play any alignment based on motivs and personaltiy.
This helped me come to terms with my first ever “Lawful Evil” character I’m playing in a modified Ice WindDale campaign. I was worried might not be portraying him as evil enough but no, he does things the rest of the group would not and is traveling along so he can grow more powerful for himself. He gets to compare himself to the others and see if he really is getting stronger.
One of my best characters was Lawful Evil, it wasn't in DND but I did play him as Lawful Evil in a mostly Good Aligned party it it made for some very interesting character interactions as well as moral dilemmas as at times we needed to do some rather morally ambiguous things and he became incredibly conflicted of the others openly trusting him to the point he became incredibly protective of them at at times self-destructive due to his conflicting natures.
I consider alignment more a sort of fluid guidelines, than hard rules, and generally I'm happy to let players put whatever on their sheet and then review based on their actual actions in-game later, which is how I run my characters too. In my experience, Evil PCs in good parties tend to either get killed very quickly for causing problems, get booted from the game entirely for the same reason, not cause problems at all, in which case there's no issue, or very rapidly cease to be Evil and start being Neutral at worst, because they couldn't consistently be mean. I've played an LE would-be conqueror who ended up being the most heroic of his group of very unscrupulous friends, because he wanted to be king and he decided that the best way to get people to accept his tyrannical rule was to be a beloved hero, known for helping people. We wrote him out of the plot because he was supposed to be a bad guy and everyone else was mostly going along with him (they were mostly first-timers, I wasn't, he was also a Paladin, and nobody else brought a CHA class, so I did a _lot_ of the talking), so his big betrayal wasn't going to pay off if he went "Join me, let's take over my country" and everyone else just said "Bet." I played a CN Sorcerer with a tendency to use less-than-pleasant methods to achieve his goals. He would lie, threaten, and straight-up kill to get what he wanted, but what he wanted was the preservation of the world. He'd offer redemption one minute, but if his offer were rejected, he wouldn't hesitate to drop several thousand tons of rock on them. He once advised that a fellow PC having trouble with the actions of other party members should just lie about it and vent to the people who shared his frustrations. He ended up being one of the more beloved characters in that game. I brought a CE Warlock to a game where we were playing members of the City Guard, and he ended up working out _great._ Pretty much every session had some level of "Alright, we need to investigate this NPC's house, but we don't have time to get a warrant. Mordred, break in." "Well, half of us have magic and we don't know how to non-lethal with magic, so most of our operations end with Mordred dumping bodies in the river." "Mordred's best friend outside the Guard is a crazy Druid who likes to magically staple animals and people together. This is fine."
Love the idea of Mordred, sounds real fun to play in a "daily life of the city guards" style campaign. I would argue your CN sorcerer would be CG though, actually. In my mind, a character with the core motivation to help people is still good, no matter how many terrible things they do to acheive it, especially if they're still willing to offer mercy on occasion, if only temporarily.
@@TheBriguy1998 Mordred was very fun. The CN Sorc, Acheron, definitely felt more CN in the moment. A lot of his better actions came early on, or near the very end, when the game was in full decline. His attempt at redemption actually ended badly, everyone he saved was killed shortly afterwards, and from then on, until very late in the game, he was very quick to advocate for murder as the best solution, and he ended up clashing with the nicer members of the party a few times. His best friends were a psionic Thri-Kreen who was generally pleasant but could do some nasty shit to people's brains if sufficiently annoyed, a recovering death cultist who'd killed another party member, and a clairvoyant Divine Soul who used Disintegrate a lot, often as a first shot, openly bragged about not having enemies because she'd killed everyone who got in her way, and once killed a man, revived him, and then said she had more 3rd level spell slots to revive him with unless he told her the information she wanted. And Acheron fell in love with her. Acheron may have wanted to help people, but the lengths he'd go to in order to accomplish that, the people he'd align himself with to do it, and the methods he was willing to employ, were less than good. He also wasn't a particularly pleasant guy to be around, but he _did_ have a fiendish deity chewing on his soul for most of the game, so him being a bit cranky is understandable.
@@ToaArcan Fair enough, stuff like alignment can depend a lot on context. It IS pretty easy for a "for the greater good" type character to go a little too far into villain territory, at which point they're less trying so save the world and more just trying so satisfy their desire for revenge or justify their actions.
In my most recent campaign I had my players choose Enneagram types rather than alignments... it's been AWESOME for roleplaying and really feeling like characters have values that motivate character choices in ways traditional alignment never did! A lot of my players did start building their characters with alignment in mind first.
Good topic and very apropos with the release of Planescape. Also happy that you aren't afraid to "go there," as it seems some folks have kind of written off alignment entirely and I think that's a shame given what story flavoring it can offer and also how key it was to earlier editions of D&D (and again Planescape, a favorite setting of mine, very much in particular). The only alignment I would strongly discourage my players (were I DMing) would be chaotic evil, if only because characters of that alignment, if played to type, don't really belong in an adventuring party. This is because they would inevitably, and possibly even at first opportunity, throw the rest of the party under the bus to in some way benefit themselves or dramatically undermine the party - which would lead to the rest of the party (if they survived) to part ways with them. Lawful evil and potentially neutral evil characters can find a place in an adventuring party because they are more inclined to work together with others to achieve some goal that benefits themselves. And its that willingness to cooperate (again, played to type so to speak) is what makes those alignments far more compatible with the others. The character may be inclined toward methods of achieving an end that the other alignments don't find particularly palatable, but at the same time generally when the chips are down a lawful evil character will go to bat for the rest of the party because they can appreciate that they are stronger and more likely to get what they want when they have others that complement their own abilities working/fighting with them. Now, as you said - I think evil alignments are still for "mature" or at least respectful players, for all the reasons you covered regarding how easy it can be to abuse the alignments to be overly disruptive, disrespectful and so on. But, a player that is capable of playing the role of a lawful evil character in such a fashion that they can be a "team player" I think shouldn't necessarily be discouraged from doing so - unless it is objectionable to the rest of the players. Ultimately it needs to be something that everyone is ok with - but, I think the other players should be reasonable if its understood that the player wanting to play the lawful/neutral evil character agrees to do so in a way that adds rather than detracts from everyone's overall experience. Because even when you are exploring darker themes and concepts and so forth, the ultimate goal is still to have fun in the end and/or at least experience something rewarding - and that goes for all the players. You shouldn't play a "dark" character so that you can explore that side of humanity, at the expense of everyone else's enjoyment of the game. And that's just a matter of respectfulness and personal responsibility on the part of the player. The fact that "it's just a game" doesn't mean you should check your empathy for the other players at the door. Critical Role is a good example (whether you like watching it or not) of how characters can be a bit disruptive without overly stepping on the toes of the other players/characters and how when push comes to shove they default to being supportive and to working together - even though some of them may tend to push things pretty close to the line at times in ways that don't allllllways feel true to character, but they will reel things in when it really matters and again the above.
One of my favorite examples of an evil character in a party is Jayne Cobb from Firefly. He's very clearly chaotic evil, and even tried to double cross the party several times, but in the end ended up being a very faithful teammate while not wavering from being chaotic evil. Might not work as well in an active dnd game, but if all the players are down for a little conflict it could be fun.
One of my favorite uses of alignment as a DM is when it's used as a consequence. It came to a head in one game when the party was at the "gate" where they needed to cross over in order to get an artifact from some celestials. Session after session, our "neutral" rogue continually tried to coerce more rewards out of NPCs, attempted to steal from shops, and hide loot from other teammates. They didn't play a Robinhood-esque character, they just had avarice as a character trait they listed from the start. And when the party crossed the threshold, everyone went to the celestial's pocket dimension, except for the rogue. He ended up shunted into Hades, not quite making it to the Abyss or The Nine Hells. And the party had no concept of where he ended up because I simply told them he was not there, and let him know I'd get him up to speed during their next break. By the end, the party had found where he was, had to determine whether or not it was worth rescuing someone like him, and ultimately got passage to find him. He ended up finding an entire plane of creatures who absolutely could not care about his problem whatsoever, and only managed to get a small amount of help by using his excess treasure to hire help to survive. Hades showed him the path he was on, and the next few sessions had him adjusting his actions to better heal his character's "soul" in game. I did make sure he knew he had the option to double down and keep going down that route, but the session in Hades was a good wake up call of how alone that kind of alignment tends to end up.
Sorry if it was unclear. He started out as true neutral, and after his actions over many sessions I privately changed his alignment to neutral evil and let him know out of game. He updated his sheet but never discussed it, forgot about it, and then this happened a few sessions later.
In my session 0, I simply told my players “hey, I’m planning a generally “save the world as fantasy superheroes” type game, so please just try not to be evil”. This is most of my player’s first game. However, in the game that I’m a player in with a bunch of veterans, we are all neutral-evil. We aren’t cartoonishly evil, but we are very selfish and not super concerned with other people
I genuinely believe that an evil character can both be helping a good aligned party and even be a happy go lucky attitude type person! The important thing to establish, just as every other thing in TTRPGs, is just that it can't be inherently disruptive. Things like stabbing a party member as they sleep, or stealing their items are disruptive in my eyes for example, but planting seeds throughout the story to get a bunch of guards on payroll to overthrow a government for any nefarious reason is not inherently disruptive. Not sure if Mike made a video on that topic with added advice for players eager to dip their toes into an Evil alignment, but I would really like to see more advice surrounding the topic instead of the many videos and takes I have seen where it kind of gets outright banned from the start. Mainly because I think it is an overall communication problem more so then a 'new player' or 'alignment' problem, and would love to see more takes and advice on making it work for both newbies and seasoned players alike!
I never thought of alignments as something that can be banned in general... I saw it more like alignments being or not being enforced. I don't think the DM could ban me from coding my character as a certain alignment if I don't even talk about it. Also, a character I liked the most was chaotic neutral... He was a smuggler just because he wanted to, tried to help Yuan-ti to get to terms with other races because he wanted them as his allies, and sold a few corpses because he was very pissed once. I played this character with two groups, and I probably made accents differently in both cases (the first one was a whole bunch of smugglers only interested in money, and another one was a group of somewhat-crazy researchers), but it still was the same character or the most part, and I loved both iteration.
In the longest campaign I played in I started as a Chaotic Neutral Rogue Assassin (ikr) who started off as a lil more immoral but would act more like a good guy because he didn't want the group to turn on him and basically over time he learned how to be good overtime of being exposed to the group and has shifted alignment by now
I see a lot of people say that WotC should get rid of alignment altogether, but I'm not sure I agree. In my opinion it was always more descriptive, rather than prescriptive anyway. Evil, Good, Chaos and Law are so integral to the cosmology of dnd that it feels pointless to try to remove it completely from the game. Also, removing the title of "evil" would absolutely not stop people from creating evil characters.
ALL descriptive terms are descriptive, not prescriptive. A lot of people just don't understand how language works. Reality doesn't warp to make the thing you say true simply because you said it, therefore none of the things you say can ever BE prescriptive. The simple way to look at it is... people can be wrong, people can not know things, and people can lie. All three of those things are different ways the words they say might not be true. So to claim any use of words prescribes any aspect of reality is absurd. Even if the aspect of reality we're talking about is the personality of a fictional character.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 I'm not quite sure we're on the same page here. Descriptive vs prescriptive might work that way irl, but in a game where you can make stuff up it's different. Descriptive would be to play an evil character, and thus label them as evil. Prescriptive would be to label a character as evil, and because of it play them as evil. Ideally there would be no difference between the two methods, but sadly that's just not how things work. "It's what my character would do" is a fine argument of it truly is that way, but if you trace that whole argument to four letters on the character sheat we have a problem. Descriptive also usually means it doesn't affect the game as much, as the game is what defines the definition. A prescriptive character is implicitly and directly affected by it. In the end I almost feel like alignment should be up to the DM, as that would mostly fix the de. vs pr. problem, but then we run into player agancy problems.
@@matt-thorn In your example, evil is still describing both characters. Fundamentally, the difference is that the first player started with nothing and developed a character organically during gameplay, while the second player already had an idea of who the character would be before the start. Personally, I find that second person is LESS problematic, because ultimately it means you came to the game with a respect for the other players' time. With your interpretation, all characters are prescribed by their players, and the ones who don't simply didn't bother to create a character in the first place. Yes, the DM is the ultimate babysitter at a table to resolve issues. That's how the hobby goes. If alignment is becoming problematic, the DM has the authority to address that problem, in whatever manner they deem most appropriate. I think you may be a bit too focused on the "it's what my character would do" idiots. They're not actually relevant to the concept of alignment in the slightest, as alignment does nothing to enable them. They would be doing the same thing if it didn't exist. Only it'd be more difficult to address the problems they cause if we got rid of it.
I only ever banned Chaotic Evil when I still used alignments. Neutral Evil can be motivated by self interest and having allies helps you achieve your goals. Lawful Evil has a code of ethics even if that code might be heinous. But nobody really wants the joker at the table. Arguably one of my characters ended up being a chaotic evil character (after falling from neutral good) but she played that character in a very interesting way.
I think a chaotic evil PC can work well so long as the player mostly only has them being cruel and unusual towards random NPCs or bad guys and not the party or important NPC allies.
My whole problem with a lot of talks about evil characters and characters doing evil things is it everyone always ends up saying something "players you trust" or "trusting your players" and the first thought I always have is: "Who are these people playing games with people they don't trust?"
In a campaign I'm a part of, I'm playing a LE mafia hitman that's been shoved in with a group of good or at least neutral characters. Here's a few things I've learned: - Just because you have evil motives doesn't mean you can't do good things. An evil character has a negative end goal, but constantly committing unjustified crime is a good way to land yourself in a prison cell before you ever get to carry out your plan. In my character's case, this has meant helping a group of people he'd otherwise never care about clear their names of a crime, because helping them gives him allies and also keeps him from being implicated in the very same crime. - Evil characters aren't dicks to everyone. They simply can't be. Even the most all-powerful D&D villain needs lackies that will fight to the bitter end for them, let alone a member of an adventuring party that are each equally as powerful as the evil character themself. This means the evil character still has to show investment in the others' goals, strike up genuine conversations, and generally be amicable enough to be worth siding with when the evil character eventually has to do something evil. - Make sure your evil character's actions do not cause problems within the above-board group, and respect boundaries. As it turns out, most people really don't like playing D&D with someone whose great fantasy of their character's actions in a fantasy world is r*pe. Literally no one. Respect your party, it's that simple. A good guideline to follow is that if your party is ok with a villain doing it, they'll probably be ok with your character doing it if there is a justifiable reason in-character for you to do so. My character brutally confirms kills when enraged, and it was expressed by the rest of my party that this was a level of content that is deemed acceptable by all involved before I started doing this. - Finally, if you're playing an evil character, give them a reason to be evil and remember that things can change over time. People generally do not want to be evil, they just do evil things in service of a goal. For my character, this goal is to get back the money and power he had growing up in a large crime family. His evil actions are partly conditioning from his upbringing and partly a result of his desperate fight to gain power. These motivations make it easier to determine how and why your character chooses to perform evil acts.
One of the favorite characters I got to play alongside was a Drow wizard who would talk up Drow superiority, try to treat some NPCS like slaves, etc. but was always helpful to the party. I don’t know his official alignment. I played a half elf tempest domain cleric who would encourage the wizard and other elvish characters to live up to their higher callings and we had plenty of fun.
My rule of thumb: * "Good" = Selfless, self-sacrificing, puts others before themselves * "Evil" = Selfish, willing to use/hurt others to get what they want, puts themselves before others * "Lawful" = Relies on hierarchy, cooperation, rules, & operating with a mindset focused on the collective * "Chaotic" = Relies on independence, whims, in-the-moment gut reactions, and is innately anarchic, with a mindset focused on the individual * "Neutral" = Doesn't take a strong stance, does not have a strong habit, or otherwise lacks inclination to favor one side or another. Every alignment can be 'good', 'evil', 'lawful', or 'chaotic' in the sense of how its played, whether or not it's disruptive, and whether or not it should be allowed. It ultimately comes down to the players, and the DM being clear on what any given alignment means in their hosted setting (as well as what behavior is encouraged & what behavior isn't allowed).
I introduced a Goblin fighter as an NPC/sidekick in a campaign, as he was the only survivor of a group of goblin bandits my players killed. He technically had an evil alignment. He grew and changed as he learned from the party, probably ending up closer to chaotic good by the end. It was a lot of fun watching players who considered themselves chaotic chastising him for wanting to do selfish or greedy things. I think alignment is an interesting starting point for any character, but there’s always room for growth and change throughout the story.
Cackled at the World Anvil ad read in the style of “Uk’otoa! …uk’otoa …” On-topic: I’m playing a Lawful Neutral necromancer in CoS right now. (The very utilitarian form of necromancy: “I’d rather these meat bags die than living beings” or “It’s not different than taking boots of a corpse, they’re not using their bodies anymore.”) Or, at least she *was* LN when the campaign began. Of course she’s been tempted by Strahd and other dark powers in the world. And now she’s trending toward a more Lawful Evil outlook. But then again, I am working with my DM on this behind the scenes, and I’m explicitly never being disruptive. Doing and saying fucked up things? Sure. But never at the cost of anyone else’s fun.
My favourite PC was a chaotic neutral wizard, and I just played him as being selfish and callous, but ultimately his self-interest always "happened" to line up with the party's goals (though of course, the means by which he achieved them would differ ethically). The key is usually to find a core justification, and the best one is the Guardians of the Galaxy quip: "why do you want to save the galaxy?" "Because I'm one of the idiots who live in it!"
The solution that works for my table (mileage may vary) is that in session 0 I give a "baseline" as to what, in MY campaigns, defines each allignment, with the added caveat that no one always acts perfectly accoring to their allignement. So I do expect to people to act accoridng to their chosen allignment for the most part, but also allow them some leeway in situations (perhaps the Lawful Good fighter would break the law in certain situations, depending on what the reason may be).
One of the best characters I ever played a lawful evil character, and after going through the experience I think I realized what one of the main issues is, particularly vis-a-vis banning evil alignments: as you said, it's less the alignment itself, and more the type of player who generally gravitates towards it. Which is to say, my character who was evil worked well in the very heroic fantasy story, because I, for the lack of a different way to put it, didn't expect him to "win," or maybe a better phrase might be, I didn't expect him to not experience consequence.... I think a lot of friction start to show up when the person who's wanting to abuse being evil, or chaotic neutral, are really any alignment, to act disruptively is generally that they also don't expect there to be consequences in the game world which would make sense if your character was acting the way that "the way my character would act.". And that's part of the reason why it gets disruptive, because it breaks the world (I mean, and obviously it's disrespectful to the other players most of the time). I knew that my character was temporarily aligned with the party, but ultimately there was likely going to be a violent differing of opinions towards the end of the campaign, and a whole reason why that worked, is because I sat down looked at my character and realized, "yeah this is what he would do, and there's no expectation on my side that it's going to end well for him."
I usually only worry about my player characters' alignment if they consider it the sole defining feature of their character. I generally don't even mention if we are using alignment in my games.
Discussion about alignment including Dragonlance characters, and no reference to the Tasselhoff Burrfoot effect? Kender being the leading example of Chaotic Neutral / Disruptive player magnets
While I did not put a whole lot of emphasis on alignments during Session 0, I honestly think that I should. Because there is a difference between how a character acts vs. how a player perceives their character vs. how everyone else perceives it. That is a lot of layers and sometimes it's not always in alignment which makes it hard for RP. I think that making a case on alignment and how people wish to be perceived in their actions would help to smooth things over before any players become problems at the table or game.
Having done some Myer-Briggs tests for fun lately, I feel like Alignment should be treated similarly. A loose idea of your character's personality, but not the be-all-end-all.
I currently have a character in the works who is a Lawful Evil Wizard (not the one I talked about in your server though). Despite it being a heroic tale, this guy is a Volstrucker agent send to keep an eye on the adventuring party he'll be joining and report back. He'll do good when needed, he'll be the devils advocate if that were to be needed, yet he wouldn't do outright evil since his alignement comes from his job: a Volstrucker. His current assignment requires he do some good, but ultimately not for good ends. One mentality I went into when making him was "They'll be allies, friends even, with these people. But if war were to break out and they met on the battlefield, they'd be enemies on the spot.". One might argue that something like Chaotic Neutral or just Neutral works better, but I whole heartetly disagree, LE works for this guy because he is very much working from his own and other codes of "honor", sometimes that will require doing some good.
I think that Palladium has the best alignment system, It has no Neutral alignment, just self serving! Palladium also has 2 good and 3 evil alignments along with 2 self serving alignments!
I got fairly positive feedback for how I playing Chaotic evil: 1: My characters are thinking of the remaining party as "part of them", be it as their "catspaws", "henchmen", "Simp-legion" etc. . Hurting the rest of the party is thus nonsensical. 2: My evil characters are always affably evil. 3: The most important questions to ask yourself: First, what is my reason to adventure? Second, what is the reason for the rest of the party to adventure with me? Both of these need stronger answers then normally if I am evil. 4: My evil characters tend to be very fun to be around at parties, have access to great booze, are very personable or funny etc.
I played a couple of evil characters. One was a devil summoner, and worshiper of asmodeus, whose mother was in cleric of asmodeus and she traded her freedom for his, so his goal was to become as powerful as possible so that he would be in a better position. When he went down to the 9 house after his death. His motivation to stay loyal to the party was that good people as friends who would watch his back as a wrecked him when they became powerful enough and since he was, and the first mate of his freebooter crew, the only intra party issue 😊 was with a player who saw the "E" on his character sheet and decided that he couldn't be trusted. I think another character I had was probably chaotic evil. This party was also not comprised of good people, they were basically a group of criminal enforcers and fixers who just did odd jobs. He was a forcibly retired arms dealer HQ/Lab got blown up with him inside, costing him his dominant hand, leaving him hell bent on revenge. Both genuinely bad people who are great party numbers. Although I did discover that The Gunsmith had a soft spot for kids and ended up making a cod piece out of the skull of a werewolf that hurt a child once. He turned it into a magic item for his Barbarian party mate. Never tick off an artificer
Alignment make more sence since Planescape. Additonaly, I have idea of chaotic neutral character - tiefling who doesn't want to die, so he made a pact with Dullahan. He is necromancer, who want achieve immotality, but also a doctor, that want to help people. He is torn by wanting to help others and help yourself. And also hate to do as others say he must do.
When I was in high school I banned Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic Evil, and Neutral Evil for a while. Lawful Evil was allowed, but nobody ever took that option.
I can see that, i feel like so many people who want to be complete assholes want to be CE, and when you tell them they can't they bump up to NE or CN and play the exact same character anyway doing the exact same shit.
On evil alignment: i actively try to drive my players into it in Curse of Strahd. The goal for the party remains the same but some players just let their characters decide scorched earth is the best way.
I don't really use alignment after a bad experience I had in the first D&D campaign I was a player in that used alignment too prescriptively. I now prefer to use narrative poles that are part of my world setting. Big ones that I use are Arcane vs Divine and Nobility vs Guilds. These are major factors in my setting, and how a character feels about these issues say a lot more about their actions and goals than an abstract alignment chart.
I only ban chaotic evil characters, unless it's an evil campaign where all bets are off. I actually love having lawful evil characters in my normal parties. In my experience, those Machiavellian types get sh*t done and make the game more interesting as a result.
In my GM'ing days (last decade and a half), I've noticed that a much more efficient (and CLEAR) way to put alignements isn't what a character does, but WHY, and under this light I wholeheartedly agree with you, Mike: description, not prescription (i.e. they tell you the high end reasons why your character would do X, rather than telling you what your character should do). My go to example is set in Barovia: LG human paladin, LN monk, CE orc barbarian (me) and a couple more people I honestly don't remember. Doesn't get more polarised than that, right? This was real play, btw: the whole thing happened more or less spontaneously. Situation goes like this: we're trying to leave Strahd's Castle, CE orc barbarian starts to respect the LN monk's capacity to take no shit from noone and kill almost anything on sight, but eventually the monk goes down and the orc carries him (why will be clear later). We get to a door that requires a blood sacrifice: the other two folks say to offer the monk, since he's unconscious and we don't have healing, might as well stop dragging around literal (almost) dead weight. I'll never forget the face my friend playing the LG human paladin made when I, the CE orc barbarian, fully agreed with him that the LN monk was NOT to be fed to the door. He asked why. I, in character, answered "Because his (the monk's) head is mine to take, not Strahd's. He will live." It was a one shot, so we never got to do that, but it shows how alignments are much more efficient when used to explain why instead of dictate what.
I've never banned a single alignment, and I won't start now XD I once played the Bastard son of a demon lord, and he was... Neutral Evil or Lawful Evil, and he worked well in the party, the DM knew I was evil, the players didn't, but when it came time for me to betray them as our goals didn't align, instead of bitching, they found that moment really fun, and sure, I died, but it was a super fun moment. Now If you don't want party infighting, I suggest a moving alignment system where the alignment of the evil member(s) slowly shift as they learn to value the good in the world. Now Sadly, all evil alignments, Chaotic Neutral AND Lawful good get a bad rep but I think they lies with whoever DMs/Teaches the players, As it is VERY easy to give examples of the alignments and then the players will more or less associate like Lawful Good with a Superman like Bland character, or Chaotic Neutral as the That Guy or Edgy rogue, or Evil alignments as Murderhobos and party killers... I feel like it should be like something in the DMG or PHB that every alignment can be played in MANY different ways, similar to how two fighters are never the same. But Overall, I feel like Banning Alignment, like Banning Multiclassing, Feats, races etc if you're new is.... okay, but not recommended, if you're scared that someone at your table will abuse it, give em the benefit of the doubt, and if they break the trust, take em aside and communicate, that's the Key aspect to this hobby, COMMUNICATION! Amazing video btw and an interesting topic Mike ^^
My current character is CN, because he’s torn between good and evil. Overall, he will be good to people, and that is his base approach to people, but if you piss him off (usually by harming someone he likes), he will kill you. He’s shot several people in the back as they were running away after their ambush failed, and he dedicated himself to killing all of the bandits that belonged to the group that raided a caravan his friends owned to the point that he resisted the idea the leader was the princess under mind control and therefore could not be killed until it was blatantly obvious. He loves helping people, and has turned down a path to power that required him to abandon people a city to potential destruction, but when he finds the guy who once held him hostage he plans to kill him slowly and painfully enough that if he actually goes through with it he might actually become straight evil. In this case, evil does not represent how willing he is to mistreat people, but rather how extreme he is willing to go when dealing out vengeance, and it pairs interestingly with the party member who is moving towards become a LG Paladin and is trying to encourage the party to be more merciful. We’ve talked a lot about the progression of the party to make sure our characters aren’t going to become incompatible, and I’m really interested to see how our characters grow together.
I use to be of the "ban evil" camp. And then I grew up. Now every time someone wants to bring an evil character to my table, I simply ask why. If their answer indicates an excuse to troll, then I know and can decide whether I'm OK with the lulz they wanna bring to in my game (And sometimes it's yes...)
one of my favourite characters was evil. Belladonna the Drow sorceress. she was with the group to get enough gold to hire an army to overthrow the city that banished her. she went along with the group. we were trying to solve the mystery of hell portals that kept opening. occasionally she snuck out to do a little murder to get back gold the party had spent on informants ect. She died holding back 3 hell hounds so the group could escape. actually i misunderstood the dm and thought they were a lot more damaged than they were. They survived her burning hands and tore her to shreds.
My main issue with alignment is when it's woven into game mechanics. Alignments as character action guidelines or shorthands to tell other players a broad strokes sense of your character is all well in good; telling someone your character is Lawful Neutral carries very different implications than saying they're Neutral Good. But when tied to mechanics it has a lot more impact, as alignment can be quite subjective as to where the lines are drawn (especially since those lines are rarely crisp and bold). And if you have a player and a DM in disagreement on where those lines are drawn, something that's not likely to come up until said line is "crossed" in game, you suddenly get into a philosophical debate in which neither side can truly be objectively right more often than not. So the GM makes a final ruling about what does and doesn't count as being in alignment and suddenly your paladin/cleric is neutered until they "repent" (if they even can) for something you thought was still justified within your interpretation of your alignment. It adds a lot of subjectivity to more concrete rules that you can't truly iron out in a session zero. I don't think alignment has been tied to mechanics directly in D&D since 3.5, but that's really the only issue I have with the alignment system. If it's only narrative shorthand, there's nothing wrong with the alignment, only potentially how people might interpret it (which is where you get things like Lawful Stupid) or are otherwise using the alignment as a cover for what they know is bad behavior.
Players need to know/reminded that alignment doesn't define their character but it's the other way around. As a DM I use alignment as a "at a glance' tools for NPCs and monsters so I would know how they would act/react without needing to have their detailed Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws (I still use that for specific NPCs). For PCs I'm not a stickler on alignment although I ban CN/CE PCs in that they tend to be disruptive at my table ("That's what my character would do!") and waste my precious free time as DM. I outright ban murderhoboing as a result.
Premise: Jack Skellington is undeniably a Lawful Evil (or at least, Evil aligned) character. He is the proud *mayor* of a town of *pure evil,* and hijacks his loyal citizens/friends' normal routines, kidnaps a man, and traumatises (potentially kills) hundreds of children, all over what was essentially a _whim_ he cooked up during a midlife crisis for nobody's benefit except himself. Argument: If you say you _wouldn't_ want to play D&D with Jack Skellington, you're a fucking liar. I rest my case
What's more frustrating is someone trying to twist alignment by going, "From their perspective, they're Lawful Good" after having their NPC assault another NPC that didn't do anything to them, which that was point the DM was using for the conflict. And it's like, no, that's not a Lawful Good character. Lawful Good doesn't just attacks someone out from nowhere. If you attack someone over prejudice, unless they're like the demons froms Freieren where it's confirmed they're soulless monsters to trick and sabotage their foes, then the character is most likely leaning closer to the Evil alignment
Well stated. I’ve watched the game change over the years from 1’st edition to 5’th. It is possible to intergrade an evil aligned character within a group but difficult! To do evil for a higher good goal. Not something I would recommend for an inexperienced DM, or a group of players that your unfamiliar with. Too often ones “good” aligned ideologies interfere with the character on the fringe of evil or caught in the act of. Even breaking down into PvP. Overall stay on the side of good for the group. If they want to go evil. Maybe a one shot as an evil group, or small group of sessions of evil. You could fold the actions of that evil group into an existing campaign.
What you do is only a small aspect of your morality. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still evil. Just like doing the wrong thing for the right reasons isn't automatically evil. For example, every adventuring party is a band of remorseless serial killers. Full stop. Every single one. Good, evil, lawful, chaotic, everywhere inbetween. They are *all* remorseless serial killers.
I've never really liked D&D alignment because of its ambiguity, and I instead really resonate with more specific traits, like the Ideals/Flaws/Bonds system introduced in 5e, the soon-to-be-expanded edicts & anathema from Pathfinder 2e (though also these terms are very... Catholic), and The Dark Eye's intensive focus on local customs when it comes to describing cultural backgrounds of player characters. If I were to run a game that uses alignment, I'd only ever really use the Lawful-Chaotic axis, while also stressing that neither is good or evil, that they really are two different philosophies that match cosmic forces, in the very Moorcock-ian sense. That even makes spells that detect alignment fine. There's no "oh this person is EVIL" option, it just gives a hunch where someone lands philosophically and how that character might function within the cosmic scale, if they ever were to become relevant. Then again, in the past eighteen months or so I've also become very critical of the six specific D&D ability scores, both for their ambiguity and their implications, so my opinion is pretty niche.
The weirdest take I ever heard about alignment was a group who vigorously maintained that, rules as written, a True Neutral character who killed a chaotic evil enemy was then *required* to kill a lawful good opponent next, to keep the multiverse in balance. So weird in so many ways!
3.5 also told you straight up PC's where heroic characters and should pick good alignments. On the subject of banning evil alignments. I do that. If I DM getting to play an evil PC is something the player earns. It comes with trust. I would never let a random freshly met person play an evil PC, but my friends Steve who I have known for over 15 years and introduced me to D&D, yeah if he wanted an evil PC, I'd trust him enough to play one. When it comes down to it, it's all about trust with players. If you trust your players you don't even need a rule book just freeform jazz your way through a great story and great game. Other times you might stick to the core rule books of PHB, MM & DM only and stick to RAW all the way because that's what you have to do.
I have been playing and running D&D since the early 1980's; I've played every edition that has ever existed (yes even 4th, though only once :)) I have never outright banned alignments. But, I have always demanded from the player the answer to the question: "how will this character mesh with the rest of the party?" And 9 times out of 10, it works out great. However, as time has passed, and editions been released there are fewer and fewer "mechanical" reasons to use alignment (no penalties for breaking with chosen alignment, few abilities/spells that target alignment, even deities have several alignments "holy" classes can choose from and still worship). As a result, in the last 5e campaign I ran, in session zero I stated, "I will not be taking alignment into consideration in this campaign. If you (the players) want to write something down on your character sheet to help describe your PC, that's OK. I don't care what it is, nor am I going to hold you to it. During play, do what you feel is right for your character AND the party." All five players did in fact write down something, no one chose lawful and no one chose evil. The campaign ran for more than three years and 12-13 levels without any real "morality issues".
"evil" is subjective, one's person evil is another "i have to do what needs to be done" ect Alignments are fluid like anything else about a persons personality, motivations ect
So i once had a lawful good character, and i forget why but the party was going to break into some rich guys manor and rob the place. There was way more reason to this besides monetary gain but not a good enough reason for my character to be on board. So i told the group if they did this i wouldnt be able to help but wouldnt stop them or work against them, they agreed to this. Then atleast one player got really mad i didnt come fight the guards when things started going sideways. Keep in mind on the whole have a reason to work with the party thing, the campaign was sold to us as "Evil Dragon Hunting", and my character and their limitations were talked about with the dm before the campaign even began
You could always make an anti-villain liike Dexter Morgan. Your motives and methods are evil, but it just so happens that you make life a little safer for the public by doing the sorts of things few have the skills or stomach for, but occasionally wish they did.
The central problem with alignment is that most people aren't philosophers and don't have comprehensive and self-consistent ideas about what the alignments are, in the first place. What does it mean to be "good" or "evil", "lawful" or "chaotic". For that matter, what does it mean to be "neutral", since one can be passively neutral or actively neutral, and those are going to result in two very different worldviews. FWIW, I generally play Neutral Good characters, because IRL, I am a libertarian, and that is how I interpret what a belief in Liberty demands of people, beginning with the Principle of Non-Aggression. This can lead to conflicts with other players, because often players don't really care about whether or not initiating violence is justified while playing though a setting/scenario/session, and DMs and authors often don't craft settings/scenarios/sessions in a way that allow PCs to progress through a story without initiating unjustifiable violence. Far too often, there's a simplistic assumption of "we're the good guys, and they are the monsters/bad guys, so murder is automatically justified". In my last campaign, one of the players was clearly playing his PC in a very selfish and disruptive manner. I never did figure out whether or not his PCs alignment was supposed to be "evil" of any kind, but he sure did play it that way, in my opinion. At the same time, my PC would flatly refuse to initiate combat unless it was absolutely unavoidable, even though the DM had clearly designed the scenario to require us to wantonly commit homicide in order to move the plot forward.
I am reluctant to let people play anything outside of 'good' because people take advantage of the alignment. If I can't trust people to do things that won't be disruptive/antagonistic, then I won't let them. There are a few people I trust to be neutral or evil. Many people will pick 'evil' so that they can punish people in-game for out of game stuff. It's really tough. It really boils down to trust and respect.
I make an alignment cube instead using these spectrums: Authority Vs Liberty Advancement vs Institution Altruism vs Tribalism different extremes or disinterest in taking a side can be considered evil in these, an emperor who rules with an iron fist an anarchist who wants a world built on might is right an unfeeling scientist who does everything in service of progress a church contented with keeping the masses under their thumb a unifier who sends help to suppress rebellions in allied kingdoms an orc warlord getting vengance for their opressed tribe by wiping out all others and for the flipside of these a paladin who sticks to the code of doing what is right. a freedom fighter standing up for people's liberties a researcher who wants to spread literacy through the printing press a saintess who upholds tradition to ensure that the world isn't overrun by demons a samaritan who puts their trust in others and helps wherever they can a loyal barbarian who protects those who she considers her found family. If a player wants to be 'evil' that is too vague and two dimensional. if they wanna be a selfish characater, I can work with that. further, protection from good and evil and detect good and evil are more flavored to the individual's cultural conceptions of right and wrong a la matthew colvile's detect cowardice.
An evil character can definitely still be part of a party, they just need an aligned goal and a healthy lack of respect for authority. I would consider Nimona (from Nimona) to be a good example of evil alignment not necessarily meaning evil character.
I think players often confuse the Lawful to Chaotic spectrum. These aren't just synonyms for good and evil. They are frameworks for how a character views and works within the rules and norms of the broader society they live in. It has less to do with personal behavior. A stoic could very well be Chaotic if they live in a society where hedonism was codified. Lawful characters are letter-of-the-law characters. Neutral characters are spirit-of-the-law characters. Chaotic characters are ends-justify-the-means characters. If a norm stands in the way of their ultimate goal, then the Chaotic character will act to achieve that goal. The good versus evil spectrum deals more with how people act on a personal level. Let's take the example of a society where slavery is "normal" and codified into law. The Lawful Good character might personally treat a slave with respect and kindness, but would not question their station nor the "right" of the slave owner to own the slave. Whereas the Chaotic Good character may actively try to free the slave or organize a rebellion to overthrow the society where slavery is codified. If you think about Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, the Children of the Light are decidedly a Lawful faction, however, if you look at Eamon Valda, at least as played in the Amazon Prime series, he would be a Lawful Evil character.
Depending on the character's goals, even a Lawful or Neutral Evil characters can be great team players in a heroic party. Let's take the simplest one. Getting rich and living in luxury. Where are they going to live in luxury? Probably in a city. For that having a good reputation is very helpful. Having a loyal group can be helpful. Which means not screwing them over for short-term gains. Not stealing from then. Not getting caught stealing or doing crimes in a city, which means better planning the characters crimes so thee character doesn't get caught. And so on. Also, just because a character is evil, doesn't mean he can't do good. As for Raistlin? It's quite simple. Even evil, he didn't like the goals of the evil goddess. What she envisioned was not a world he wanted to live in. Sure, he joined her forces, but only to stop them.
Like Mike pointed out playing an evil character doesn't mean you have to be dickish and disruptive. You can play a character with ulterior motive, a character who's a double agent, a character who's a charming charlatan who's lying about who they are to hide past criminal behavior that they're on the run from, a werewolf who embraces the curse so they can control it but embracing curse=evil in D&D so mabye that's something they're grappling with and could grow past. Evil characters are like the flips side of the coin of lawful stupid, it can be abused with the "but muh alignment" argument. As Runesmith once suggested; "Evil in D&D.......just means harmful" which I interpret as they have no constraints and like everything in D&D can be very diverse and varied in how they are played, motivations and ideals can be skewed. You can make a villain to hero, a tragic villain or just someone who's a criminal who's willing yo put aside *most* of their vile tendencies. Obviously 1 evil character in a gaggle of goodie two shoes adventurers is cause for alarm but again, like Mike said if the player has no intention of actively or passively making the game less fun for others then there's not much harm. Why ban it unless you just want to ruin that player's fun?
A functioning group can have both good and evil people in it, as well as lawful and chaotic. Like, anybody who has had a job before, at any point in their life, knows this. Every workplace has people that fit into every alignment. And largely, the group functions as its supposed to despite that. An adventuring party is no different.
I would consider an evil character, but refuse to state exactly which evil. It would depend, because I haven't played almost any d&d yet, and I Wouldn't want it to be my first character , or second
Personally ive ended up just not using alignment anymore, I just found it FAR to reductive, and ever since using Edicts and Anathemas of Pathfinder I just that same basic idea for 5e and such now as well that uses alignment. I think its just nicer to know what a player's character is about in the end.
I don't like alignment*, but when playing in games that use it I try and figure out which of the nine alignments best fits whatever I figure out for my character, while also fitting the campaign concept. Meanwhile, I know Prudence in Oxventure is an evil character. I'm not sure what flavour of evil, but Jane's made no secret that there's an E on her character sheet, but plays her in an entirely non-disruptive way who works towards the party's goals. *Actually I do like alignment, I just don't like alignment in the D&D tradition. 'chaotic vs lawful' and 'good vs evil' are too abstract for me to use as roleplay prompts, compared to even stuff like Animon Story's character virtue (which then interacts with a couple of other roleplay prompts you put onto the sheet during character creation - their desire, and arguably their flaw), which while not framed as alignment - there's no spectrum of x to y, they're positive traits that your character embodies, even if they don't know it yet - does the thing advocates of alignment in D&D who I understand why they like alignment claims it does, but in a way that actually works for me rather than feeling like abstract nonsense. I have something to go on if I glance at a sheet and it says "virtue - wisdom; desire - have all the answers; flaw - lacking self confidence." in a way I just don't from "chaotic good." - I know why I picked chaotic good for that character, he didn't trust systems of authority, government, and the like, but would go out of his way to help people less fortunate than himself, but 'chaotic good' while translating that into mechanical terms isn't concrete enough for me to work as a prompt outside of the situations that lead to me writing CG on the sheet.
Its like people don't think an "evil" character can be a good friend. Which is strange because the reason the character is evil doesn't have to have anything to do with the way they interact with friends. They might be evil because they will choose to burn a town if given the profitable option to do so. Honestly I am not much of a fan of vague descriptors because no one agrees on what they mean anyway. Like the Chaotic good rogue is still robbing people left and right. Yet the chaotic evil Rogue has to create friction by upsetting allies?
I have alignments in my game, but I can't really be bothered to focus on them. I just let my players know if their actions are legal/acceptable in the society they are in
Never really understood why people had a problem with what alignments meant. They're general guides for morality and worldviews. Maybe this just made sense to me alone for some reason? Lawful - Rules exist for a reason, even if they hurt me sometimes, and authority figures usually know what they're doing. Or a personal moral code. Not anally upholding rules or blindly following orders. Chaotic - If a rule or authority figure ends up harming me I'm willing to ignore it. Not disregarding rules or doing things just for the "chaos". Good - I value other's lives and well being above personal gain or maybe my own. Generally want the least collateral damage. Evil - I value my own life or personal gain over other's, ends justify the means, generally selfish behavior not kicking puppies for the sake of it. Neutral - Look at things on a case-by-case basis, not apathetic or "how could I possibly choose between the king who wants people to not die and the dragon who wants to torture people by skinning them alive? I'm morally grey."
I'm not necessarily a big fan of alignment and I got no love for wangrods that just like to be disruptive but I really dislike murder hobo players. That is one reason I feel some sort of morality structure can be beneficial. If somebody wants to play an "evil" character but can work with party and has some sort of personality than I'm down. If your a "good" character that is confused when my character has a problem that you casually massacred an entire town of people that just happened to live in the same cave as the treasure you wanted...well we might not be able to play together.
Okay, here's my (maybe) hot take: alignment has no relation to character behaviour. It is neither prescriptive nor descriptive. Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil are actual, tangible forces within the world of D&D, and they are in constant conflict. Alignment is simply a declaration of which side of those conflicts the character is on. An evil action can be done to bring about a greater good, or vice versa, so what a character does has no bearing on what their alignment is.
Really good video, as always, but I *_hate_* that people keep analyzing problems with D&D's alignment system from the perspective that it's only problem players and authoritarian GMs misreading and misinterpreting the rules that makes it a problem. Pick up a copy of the AD&D PHB (either edition) and read the descriptions of the nine alignments-- those are _personality disorders_ and that is the black-letter text of the game rules that DMs are encouraged to _punish_ players for deviating from. Sure, everyone with half a brain just ignored the alignment rules and pretended they said... whatever actually made their game work. But that doesn't mean that the people who had problems were playing the game wrong or... failing to understand that the morality rules had been written by a racist psychopath and were best left out entirely. So yeah... video suggestion: a deep dive on the AD&D description of the alignments and how their screaming incompatibility with human morality caused all of the problems we're still trying to fix today. Gygaxian Morality: Not Even Once
Generally, I toss them out and go with a basic cosmic association from the 4e cosmos - Far Realm, Primordial/Titans, Astral (Gods), with the side Evils (the Abyss and Infernal) but 99% of people are Unaligned. Then characters act and react in a mix of background, familial culture, social environment, factions, personal faith, etc.
Then as I build on the setting, I make Asmodean evil very ends justify the means and personal ambition over all, to better reflect Asmodeus' role in the pre-history and Bael Turath. And the Abyss is an alien corruption from Tharzidun's shard of evil taken from a previous creation destroyed by the Primordials (taking a bit of demons from Exalted 1st edition). Then the gods are always in petty, Antiquity-type conflicts but generally they represent their domains instead of concepts of good or evil in an objective sense, more in a relativistic context.
Currently the party is more or less 1 Lawful Evil type with a personal identity issue (raised Asmodean, slowly learning the society and culture he had lost in childhood), 2 Neutral Goods, a couple of selfish Neutral types (NE) a bit like Amos Burton from The Expanse, a slightly less selfish Neutral, and one who is more or less low-key neutral with lawful tendencies.
Yes, there is nothing inherently wrong with Alignments. They're just basic Guidlines and great for remembering a characters priorities. For instance; Chaotic for me means they're Emotionally Reactive. & Neutral Alignments mean they only care about what effects Their life and/or what They care about.
I've seen some really lame intepretations of true neutral. Things like "they have no opinions/beliefs," and "true neutral characters cant be adventurers/heroes, because they don't get involved in conflict." I have a character (that I havent been able to play yet, because getting a group together is hard) who I gave the True Neutral alignment because he doesn't believe in absolutes. Laws are necessary, but they're not inherently good or right, and he will break the law without hesitation if he thinks the law is wrong or stupid. He would prefer if the law was somehow perfect, it just isn’t. The concepts of hard and fast good or evil are abstract and nonsensical to him. He's fully willing to do something broadly considered evil, if he thinks its the best course, and he might think that something broadly considered good is actually wrong, from his point of view. He has zero interest in living by what other people consider good or evil, and he can be rather selfish, but he does care about minimizing harm, if he doesn't have to sacrifice himself to do it. His own life is his first priority, and everyone else's lives are second on the list (in terms of survival).
Just an observation, not a criticism: I'm a little puzzled by your regular references to the move toward heroic fantasy in recent editions. I have played D&D in all its editions as they were published, and no group I've been in ever saw it as anything but heroic fantasy. When we wanted a change from heroic fantasy, we switched from D&D. I realise not every group plays the same (I also was never part of a group, or even heard of one, that used the shared world, real times passes in game trope you mentioned way back), but for every RPGer I know personally, D&D has always been the heroic fantasy RPG, that's its niche.
Eh, I still prefer to edge away from evil. Mostly because I don’t trust people to play that one well. It is possible to play it and be able to get along well with the party, heck I played a good character who was teamed up with an evil one and we still got along in a friendly manner. But mostly? In most of my experiences people aren’t that great at conveying that complexity and evil can be complex and when evil is simple….well you aren’t likely to be able to justify getting along with the party if you go with a simplified evil. So yeah, I find people aren’t great at it. Also, hate saying this, I find the constant “doom and gloom” mentality that evil aligned designed characters a bit tiresome. It’s one note and a flat one at that. Least for me. But that isn’t to say I haven’t seen or even played a well done evil character. It can be done. So I wouldn’t say I across the board that it’s a bad thing. I will say that it requires building a report and trust with those you play with to pull it off and make it organic and still cohesive to the party, because dnd is still a collaborative group game after all, something that doesn’t always mesh well with the usual trope of loner evil types, which is the majority of those we know in media. Personally I prefer playing neutral characters, least that is what most I know label it as. I rarely will play lawful anything. This does mean I play a lot of grey morality. But mostly this is because my play style is one I have had others describe as “subtle roleplaying” and also “a normal person with a skill doing the best they can in the situation.” I play into emotions and parse out information on whatever feels relevant at the time for backstories with mentalities of my characters in mind. I’ll have them be say, open about their childhood memories but maybe they not tell you they watched their lover die protecting them from a vicious animal attack until after a similar one attacks the party. I might describe they have scars on their arms that are distinctive for lightning strikes without directly saying they got hit by such a thing before. I might say they wake from a nightmare in a cold sweat despite the dm not saying they dreamed and then have the character decide they can’t sleep and go find hobby or training to past the time until the rest of the party wakes. It’s little things that seem silly. Like dancing regularly, or playing a game of chess before bed, etc, that I use to try to convey. I describe the fear and emotions they have, quickly of course as I don’t like to monologue, but I am trying to make it understood where their head is at, if it’s obvious in a passive body language way. Just small things like posture, a tapping foot, lounging, a cocky grin, touching their locket, stuff like that. Anyway, yeah, so alignment…not exactly something I play by anyway but when I do it’s mostly neutral as it plays best into what I’m conveying.
I've never "banned" alignments, but I don't implement them in any way rules-wise. I don't find them to be a helpful concept at all, but if you want to write two words down on your character sheet because they mean something to you, fill your boots.
Our group doesn't pay much attention to alignment. It's still in the game, since certain spells and magic items are affected by it, but otherwise nobody really cares. Trying to ban troublesome alignments doesn't really work, since (as Mike points out) players who are determined to be jerks will find an excuse, no matter what. Better to just say it directly: "I don't care what your alleged alignment is, if you start ruining the game for everyone else, you're gonna get kicked."
What do you think of alignment?
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You can play an evil character, and you can play a character evilly. They overlap but they are not the same.
My fav character arc was in Star Wars, Clone Wars era, wjere they went from a fairly uninterested, basic Neutral Good sort, straight through to a full heel-turn Chaotic Evil who swore to rid the galaxy of all Force users (freedom from those who would use their powers over us all), but was fiercely loyal to her friends and crew, minus the jedi PC who was in part the reason for her descent into evil, but also she had conflicting feelings for as a person, and surpressed those feelings into more frustration and rage.
She died confronting Count Dooku on Geonosis, where she had been left behind while the PCs were off on a mission and had decided to betray the CIS and back the Republicans.
@@TheBahamaatwhat? Who is they?
I used to do something called "Apparent alignment" which is basically how the character is perceived and "true alignment" which is often only discernible by magic or divine means.
This can lead to fun things like the players being sure the necromancer is Evil but then having to rethink their opinion when he ran and hid inside of a temple that had a ward that kept evil people from walking into it. Then the priest who gave them the quest to eliminate the necromancer wouldn't cross the warded threshold.
Basically use alignment but break and shake assumptions.
The old Vampire the Masquerade had Nature (Your true alignment) and Demeanor (How you portrayed yourself to others) that would allow you to hide your true motives and intentions from others. If both were the same it meant your character didn't pretend to be something they aren't as the their outward demeanor reflected their inner nature.
In my experience, Lawful Evil is a lot more manageable than Chaotic Evil, because LE lends itself very nicely to the "loyal to my friends, brutal to my enemies" much better.
Probably depends on how we're defining law/chaos. I tend to envision LE as more goal oriented and CE as more family oriented. An evil biker gang I would classify as CE. "The bigger picture doesn't matter, what matters is you don't fuck with us"
Came to the comments for proof that Alignment is a stupid thing that no one even agrees on, so we shouldn't bother assigning it to our characters, and I struck gold.
@@Timonsaylor What activities would that evil biker gang be participating in if they were left to get on with their own wishes without being interfered with?
@@presetregret184 Alignment shouldn't be assigned to characters, they should earn it by their actions being assessed against the alignment archtypes. It could be that only the DM tracks it, the players just get their characters to act as they want.
@@presetregret184 I pretty much agree, but I haven't come across a satisfactory alternative yet
I'm old, so maybe my memory is off, but all the way back in AD&D DMG there was an entire write up of a party of 9 characters, one of each alignment, trying to do a task and it was ridiculous in its rigid adherence to the letter of the alignment...including the CN character just running screaming into certain death because they were "crazy". The LE character wanted to negotiate (like a devil) and the TN character contemplated the universe before doing anything.
I think stuff like that from older versions combined with the penalty for switching alignment made players at the time not only blindly stick to alignment, it codified them into very narrow lanes and a lot of that still carries over to today. Paladins players played their character as Lawful Stupid because they didn't want their DMs to accuse them of not being LG and effectively destroy their character.
1E and 2E alignment was played alot of stay in your lane. And it was one of the things which should have been a Session 0 discussions. Lots of people took alignment to be a pill (PROBLEM). And DMs would also be a pill.
Hey Peter Parker Purple Paladin of Pittsburg you come to an intersection. on the left is a burning orphanage, on the right is old lady about to get ran over what do you do?
It didn't matter BOOM Change of Alignment, level, and lost of paladinhood.
I used to tell my players alignment is sixth or seventh on your list of things to worry about or stick too.
@@RottenRogerDM but I do think TSR themselves caused the issue by so rigidly defined alignment in the DMG. Lawful Good _was_ Lawful Stupid because that;s how it was described in the DMG, whereas today LG is not about strict adherence to the letter of the law like a crazy, 2H sword wielding pedant. 😉
EDIT: I found the text, I'm shocked I remembered the "9 alignment party" as accurately as I did.
Here's the first few sentences AD&D's Lawful Good: "Characters of this alignment believe that an orderly, strong society with a well-organized government can work to make life better for the majority of the people. To ensure the quality of life, laws must be created and obeyed." Most tables wouldn't accept that this is LG in 5e, most see "Lawful" as a set of beliefs, not adhering to the law.
@@andrewshandle Very true. And we didn't have the net to discuss things. So local views ruled.
Whispering the name again every time you say it just always makes me smile. Such a little thing that changes the tone just enough to be fun
I de-emphasize alignment and emphasize the "work together, don't be an a-hole" expectation. So far that has worked to my satisfaction.
The two are not mutually exclusive, the a-hole character just gets assassinated in the mission after the "it's what my character would do" comment, good/bad/neutral they are still getting assassinated for being an a-hole player (playing the a-hole character)
I don't ban alignments. If alignment comes up I simply don't use the D&D alignments. I address everything by the colors of mana from Magic the Gathering.
"Why can't I play an evil alignment?"
"You can play into your black mana leanings as hard as you want. Just make sure you have a reason for playing nice with the party. You need them to achieve your ambitions."
"Why can't I play chaotic neutral?"
"Red mana is a great motivator for your character. Just make sure your character is enough of a functioning adult that they would have survived up to this point and not been murdered by the barbarian tribe or goblin warren you crawled out of."
"I'm the most lawful and goodest of all the lawful good paladins to ever paladin. No evil will escape might righteous judgment."
"Listen, I don't have a problem with white mana, but you can't use obvious fascist talking points to get your way in the game world. There's a hundred reasons why the church of Pholtus, the Azorius Senate, and the Mercy Killers are the bad guys in all my campaigns."
I'm one of those DMs that didn't allow CN for the longest time. There had been too many experiences with players that looked at the description for the alignment and decided that allowed them to be unhinged. I agree that the core issue is the player, but, no other alignment really encouraged the dipshittery as much as CN (in my experience).
I completely agree that in session zero it's extremely important to hammer home the importance of having a character concept that is conducive to team play.
Regarding Lawful Good, I have long appreciated the saying, "It's Lawful Good, not Lawful Stupid."
Good video, Mike.
Alignment is an excellent worldbuilding and character design tool. I cannot be convinced otherwise, as it's been a smash success at my tables for the entirety of my TTRPG experience (~4 years).
It's a simple way of categorizing the world that allows you to expand upon it.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 yup yup!
I allow any alignment the players want as long as the characters all have a reason to move in the same general direction. I trust my players to think of reasons as to why their characters would stay together even if they may have differences.
Edit: and I don't typically play with people I don't trust in this way. If it's a new person I'll be super clear on what is expected so no one is blindsided and what will happen if expectations aren't met. That kinda sounded more sinister than I meant. Lol
I'm currently playing a CE character in a morally neutral adventure campaign. Chaotic evil doesn't have to mean disruptive. My character is unpleasant, but i got everyone's consent for that before I brought her to the table. We're in a segment where my CE character is being recruited by the party, and the progression is the party will be helping me with something as a favor, i return it by joining the party, and over time, these disparate characters become "her" people (think Greed from Fullmetal Alchemist)
I have a Lawful Good paladin who drinks heavily, and is bloody brutal in fights, but is still kind and just. Alignment is not a straitjacket, it is a shorthand reference for a character's moral and ethical outlook and beliefs. I use it as a guideline for roleplay and am confused at why so many people are against it nowadays. That said great video, a share a lot of you content with friends to help them understand more esoteric parts of D&D
I don't like alignment in general, mostly because I find it leads to static characters. But I want to see characters having an arc to become something different than they started as. Like you said, people excuse their character'S behaviour no matter the alignment, and will play then just a single track mind that is not going to change. And alignment had also been a tool to punish players with forced alignment changes and repercussions of that in previous editions, thus teaching even more to stick to a static character.
Why would alignment change be a punishment and not part of their character arc like you mention?
@@HankHill11 Don't ask me, I have not written those useless rules. It was a punishment because there was things like level loss and such involved. Also magic items and certain classes also had alignment prerequisites which meant the character got crippled if they got their alignment changed. Th whole system was set up that people did not wanted to change their alignment and thus there was no incentive to become a better person or things like that which we see with character arcs.
It only leads to static characters becausw people cant comprehend thst their are different flavors of law chaos good evil and nuetrality. There are mutiple ways to play any alignment based on motivs and personaltiy.
This helped me come to terms with my first ever “Lawful Evil” character I’m playing in a modified Ice WindDale campaign. I was worried might not be portraying him as evil enough but no, he does things the rest of the group would not and is traveling along so he can grow more powerful for himself. He gets to compare himself to the others and see if he really is getting stronger.
One of my best characters was Lawful Evil, it wasn't in DND but I did play him as Lawful Evil in a mostly Good Aligned party it it made for some very interesting character interactions as well as moral dilemmas as at times we needed to do some rather morally ambiguous things and he became incredibly conflicted of the others openly trusting him to the point he became incredibly protective of them at at times self-destructive due to his conflicting natures.
I consider alignment more a sort of fluid guidelines, than hard rules, and generally I'm happy to let players put whatever on their sheet and then review based on their actual actions in-game later, which is how I run my characters too. In my experience, Evil PCs in good parties tend to either get killed very quickly for causing problems, get booted from the game entirely for the same reason, not cause problems at all, in which case there's no issue, or very rapidly cease to be Evil and start being Neutral at worst, because they couldn't consistently be mean.
I've played an LE would-be conqueror who ended up being the most heroic of his group of very unscrupulous friends, because he wanted to be king and he decided that the best way to get people to accept his tyrannical rule was to be a beloved hero, known for helping people. We wrote him out of the plot because he was supposed to be a bad guy and everyone else was mostly going along with him (they were mostly first-timers, I wasn't, he was also a Paladin, and nobody else brought a CHA class, so I did a _lot_ of the talking), so his big betrayal wasn't going to pay off if he went "Join me, let's take over my country" and everyone else just said "Bet."
I played a CN Sorcerer with a tendency to use less-than-pleasant methods to achieve his goals. He would lie, threaten, and straight-up kill to get what he wanted, but what he wanted was the preservation of the world. He'd offer redemption one minute, but if his offer were rejected, he wouldn't hesitate to drop several thousand tons of rock on them. He once advised that a fellow PC having trouble with the actions of other party members should just lie about it and vent to the people who shared his frustrations. He ended up being one of the more beloved characters in that game.
I brought a CE Warlock to a game where we were playing members of the City Guard, and he ended up working out _great._ Pretty much every session had some level of "Alright, we need to investigate this NPC's house, but we don't have time to get a warrant. Mordred, break in." "Well, half of us have magic and we don't know how to non-lethal with magic, so most of our operations end with Mordred dumping bodies in the river." "Mordred's best friend outside the Guard is a crazy Druid who likes to magically staple animals and people together. This is fine."
Love the idea of Mordred, sounds real fun to play in a "daily life of the city guards" style campaign. I would argue your CN sorcerer would be CG though, actually. In my mind, a character with the core motivation to help people is still good, no matter how many terrible things they do to acheive it, especially if they're still willing to offer mercy on occasion, if only temporarily.
@@TheBriguy1998 Mordred was very fun.
The CN Sorc, Acheron, definitely felt more CN in the moment. A lot of his better actions came early on, or near the very end, when the game was in full decline. His attempt at redemption actually ended badly, everyone he saved was killed shortly afterwards, and from then on, until very late in the game, he was very quick to advocate for murder as the best solution, and he ended up clashing with the nicer members of the party a few times. His best friends were a psionic Thri-Kreen who was generally pleasant but could do some nasty shit to people's brains if sufficiently annoyed, a recovering death cultist who'd killed another party member, and a clairvoyant Divine Soul who used Disintegrate a lot, often as a first shot, openly bragged about not having enemies because she'd killed everyone who got in her way, and once killed a man, revived him, and then said she had more 3rd level spell slots to revive him with unless he told her the information she wanted. And Acheron fell in love with her.
Acheron may have wanted to help people, but the lengths he'd go to in order to accomplish that, the people he'd align himself with to do it, and the methods he was willing to employ, were less than good. He also wasn't a particularly pleasant guy to be around, but he _did_ have a fiendish deity chewing on his soul for most of the game, so him being a bit cranky is understandable.
@@ToaArcan Fair enough, stuff like alignment can depend a lot on context. It IS pretty easy for a "for the greater good" type character to go a little too far into villain territory, at which point they're less trying so save the world and more just trying so satisfy their desire for revenge or justify their actions.
In my most recent campaign I had my players choose Enneagram types rather than alignments... it's been AWESOME for roleplaying and really feeling like characters have values that motivate character choices in ways traditional alignment never did! A lot of my players did start building their characters with alignment in mind first.
Good topic and very apropos with the release of Planescape. Also happy that you aren't afraid to "go there," as it seems some folks have kind of written off alignment entirely and I think that's a shame given what story flavoring it can offer and also how key it was to earlier editions of D&D (and again Planescape, a favorite setting of mine, very much in particular).
The only alignment I would strongly discourage my players (were I DMing) would be chaotic evil, if only because characters of that alignment, if played to type, don't really belong in an adventuring party. This is because they would inevitably, and possibly even at first opportunity, throw the rest of the party under the bus to in some way benefit themselves or dramatically undermine the party - which would lead to the rest of the party (if they survived) to part ways with them.
Lawful evil and potentially neutral evil characters can find a place in an adventuring party because they are more inclined to work together with others to achieve some goal that benefits themselves. And its that willingness to cooperate (again, played to type so to speak) is what makes those alignments far more compatible with the others. The character may be inclined toward methods of achieving an end that the other alignments don't find particularly palatable, but at the same time generally when the chips are down a lawful evil character will go to bat for the rest of the party because they can appreciate that they are stronger and more likely to get what they want when they have others that complement their own abilities working/fighting with them.
Now, as you said - I think evil alignments are still for "mature" or at least respectful players, for all the reasons you covered regarding how easy it can be to abuse the alignments to be overly disruptive, disrespectful and so on. But, a player that is capable of playing the role of a lawful evil character in such a fashion that they can be a "team player" I think shouldn't necessarily be discouraged from doing so - unless it is objectionable to the rest of the players. Ultimately it needs to be something that everyone is ok with - but, I think the other players should be reasonable if its understood that the player wanting to play the lawful/neutral evil character agrees to do so in a way that adds rather than detracts from everyone's overall experience. Because even when you are exploring darker themes and concepts and so forth, the ultimate goal is still to have fun in the end and/or at least experience something rewarding - and that goes for all the players. You shouldn't play a "dark" character so that you can explore that side of humanity, at the expense of everyone else's enjoyment of the game. And that's just a matter of respectfulness and personal responsibility on the part of the player. The fact that "it's just a game" doesn't mean you should check your empathy for the other players at the door. Critical Role is a good example (whether you like watching it or not) of how characters can be a bit disruptive without overly stepping on the toes of the other players/characters and how when push comes to shove they default to being supportive and to working together - even though some of them may tend to push things pretty close to the line at times in ways that don't allllllways feel true to character, but they will reel things in when it really matters and again the above.
One of my favorite examples of an evil character in a party is Jayne Cobb from Firefly. He's very clearly chaotic evil, and even tried to double cross the party several times, but in the end ended up being a very faithful teammate while not wavering from being chaotic evil. Might not work as well in an active dnd game, but if all the players are down for a little conflict it could be fun.
One of my favorite uses of alignment as a DM is when it's used as a consequence. It came to a head in one game when the party was at the "gate" where they needed to cross over in order to get an artifact from some celestials.
Session after session, our "neutral" rogue continually tried to coerce more rewards out of NPCs, attempted to steal from shops, and hide loot from other teammates. They didn't play a Robinhood-esque character, they just had avarice as a character trait they listed from the start.
And when the party crossed the threshold, everyone went to the celestial's pocket dimension, except for the rogue. He ended up shunted into Hades, not quite making it to the Abyss or The Nine Hells. And the party had no concept of where he ended up because I simply told them he was not there, and let him know I'd get him up to speed during their next break.
By the end, the party had found where he was, had to determine whether or not it was worth rescuing someone like him, and ultimately got passage to find him. He ended up finding an entire plane of creatures who absolutely could not care about his problem whatsoever, and only managed to get a small amount of help by using his excess treasure to hire help to survive.
Hades showed him the path he was on, and the next few sessions had him adjusting his actions to better heal his character's "soul" in game. I did make sure he knew he had the option to double down and keep going down that route, but the session in Hades was a good wake up call of how alone that kind of alignment tends to end up.
Sorry if it was unclear. He started out as true neutral, and after his actions over many sessions I privately changed his alignment to neutral evil and let him know out of game. He updated his sheet but never discussed it, forgot about it, and then this happened a few sessions later.
In my session 0, I simply told my players “hey, I’m planning a generally “save the world as fantasy superheroes” type game, so please just try not to be evil”. This is most of my player’s first game.
However, in the game that I’m a player in with a bunch of veterans, we are all neutral-evil. We aren’t cartoonishly evil, but we are very selfish and not super concerned with other people
I genuinely believe that an evil character can both be helping a good aligned party and even be a happy go lucky attitude type person! The important thing to establish, just as every other thing in TTRPGs, is just that it can't be inherently disruptive. Things like stabbing a party member as they sleep, or stealing their items are disruptive in my eyes for example, but planting seeds throughout the story to get a bunch of guards on payroll to overthrow a government for any nefarious reason is not inherently disruptive.
Not sure if Mike made a video on that topic with added advice for players eager to dip their toes into an Evil alignment, but I would really like to see more advice surrounding the topic instead of the many videos and takes I have seen where it kind of gets outright banned from the start. Mainly because I think it is an overall communication problem more so then a 'new player' or 'alignment' problem, and would love to see more takes and advice on making it work for both newbies and seasoned players alike!
I never thought of alignments as something that can be banned in general... I saw it more like alignments being or not being enforced. I don't think the DM could ban me from coding my character as a certain alignment if I don't even talk about it.
Also, a character I liked the most was chaotic neutral... He was a smuggler just because he wanted to, tried to help Yuan-ti to get to terms with other races because he wanted them as his allies, and sold a few corpses because he was very pissed once. I played this character with two groups, and I probably made accents differently in both cases (the first one was a whole bunch of smugglers only interested in money, and another one was a group of somewhat-crazy researchers), but it still was the same character or the most part, and I loved both iteration.
In the longest campaign I played in I started as a Chaotic Neutral Rogue Assassin (ikr) who started off as a lil more immoral but would act more like a good guy because he didn't want the group to turn on him and basically over time he learned how to be good overtime of being exposed to the group and has shifted alignment by now
I see a lot of people say that WotC should get rid of alignment altogether, but I'm not sure I agree. In my opinion it was always more descriptive, rather than prescriptive anyway. Evil, Good, Chaos and Law are so integral to the cosmology of dnd that it feels pointless to try to remove it completely from the game.
Also, removing the title of "evil" would absolutely not stop people from creating evil characters.
Yeah, its a great tool for making characters. When it's used correctly. WotC just needs to define it a bit better in their books
ALL descriptive terms are descriptive, not prescriptive. A lot of people just don't understand how language works. Reality doesn't warp to make the thing you say true simply because you said it, therefore none of the things you say can ever BE prescriptive.
The simple way to look at it is... people can be wrong, people can not know things, and people can lie. All three of those things are different ways the words they say might not be true. So to claim any use of words prescribes any aspect of reality is absurd. Even if the aspect of reality we're talking about is the personality of a fictional character.
@@dontmisunderstand6041 I'm not quite sure we're on the same page here. Descriptive vs prescriptive might work that way irl, but in a game where you can make stuff up it's different. Descriptive would be to play an evil character, and thus label them as evil. Prescriptive would be to label a character as evil, and because of it play them as evil.
Ideally there would be no difference between the two methods, but sadly that's just not how things work. "It's what my character would do" is a fine argument of it truly is that way, but if you trace that whole argument to four letters on the character sheat we have a problem. Descriptive also usually means it doesn't affect the game as much, as the game is what defines the definition. A prescriptive character is implicitly and directly affected by it.
In the end I almost feel like alignment should be up to the DM, as that would mostly fix the de. vs pr. problem, but then we run into player agancy problems.
@@matt-thorn In your example, evil is still describing both characters. Fundamentally, the difference is that the first player started with nothing and developed a character organically during gameplay, while the second player already had an idea of who the character would be before the start. Personally, I find that second person is LESS problematic, because ultimately it means you came to the game with a respect for the other players' time.
With your interpretation, all characters are prescribed by their players, and the ones who don't simply didn't bother to create a character in the first place.
Yes, the DM is the ultimate babysitter at a table to resolve issues. That's how the hobby goes. If alignment is becoming problematic, the DM has the authority to address that problem, in whatever manner they deem most appropriate.
I think you may be a bit too focused on the "it's what my character would do" idiots. They're not actually relevant to the concept of alignment in the slightest, as alignment does nothing to enable them. They would be doing the same thing if it didn't exist. Only it'd be more difficult to address the problems they cause if we got rid of it.
I only ever banned Chaotic Evil when I still used alignments. Neutral Evil can be motivated by self interest and having allies helps you achieve your goals. Lawful Evil has a code of ethics even if that code might be heinous.
But nobody really wants the joker at the table.
Arguably one of my characters ended up being a chaotic evil character (after falling from neutral good) but she played that character in a very interesting way.
I think a chaotic evil PC can work well so long as the player mostly only has them being cruel and unusual towards random NPCs or bad guys and not the party or important NPC allies.
My whole problem with a lot of talks about evil characters and characters doing evil things is it everyone always ends up saying something "players you trust" or "trusting your players" and the first thought I always have is: "Who are these people playing games with people they don't trust?"
In a campaign I'm a part of, I'm playing a LE mafia hitman that's been shoved in with a group of good or at least neutral characters. Here's a few things I've learned:
- Just because you have evil motives doesn't mean you can't do good things. An evil character has a negative end goal, but constantly committing unjustified crime is a good way to land yourself in a prison cell before you ever get to carry out your plan. In my character's case, this has meant helping a group of people he'd otherwise never care about clear their names of a crime, because helping them gives him allies and also keeps him from being implicated in the very same crime.
- Evil characters aren't dicks to everyone. They simply can't be. Even the most all-powerful D&D villain needs lackies that will fight to the bitter end for them, let alone a member of an adventuring party that are each equally as powerful as the evil character themself. This means the evil character still has to show investment in the others' goals, strike up genuine conversations, and generally be amicable enough to be worth siding with when the evil character eventually has to do something evil.
- Make sure your evil character's actions do not cause problems within the above-board group, and respect boundaries. As it turns out, most people really don't like playing D&D with someone whose great fantasy of their character's actions in a fantasy world is r*pe. Literally no one. Respect your party, it's that simple. A good guideline to follow is that if your party is ok with a villain doing it, they'll probably be ok with your character doing it if there is a justifiable reason in-character for you to do so. My character brutally confirms kills when enraged, and it was expressed by the rest of my party that this was a level of content that is deemed acceptable by all involved before I started doing this.
- Finally, if you're playing an evil character, give them a reason to be evil and remember that things can change over time. People generally do not want to be evil, they just do evil things in service of a goal. For my character, this goal is to get back the money and power he had growing up in a large crime family. His evil actions are partly conditioning from his upbringing and partly a result of his desperate fight to gain power. These motivations make it easier to determine how and why your character chooses to perform evil acts.
blursed outro, love it
One of the favorite characters I got to play alongside was a Drow wizard who would talk up Drow superiority, try to treat some NPCS like slaves, etc. but was always helpful to the party. I don’t know his official alignment. I played a half elf tempest domain cleric who would encourage the wizard and other elvish characters to live up to their higher callings and we had plenty of fun.
My rule of thumb:
* "Good" = Selfless, self-sacrificing, puts others before themselves
* "Evil" = Selfish, willing to use/hurt others to get what they want, puts themselves before others
* "Lawful" = Relies on hierarchy, cooperation, rules, & operating with a mindset focused on the collective
* "Chaotic" = Relies on independence, whims, in-the-moment gut reactions, and is innately anarchic, with a mindset focused on the individual
* "Neutral" = Doesn't take a strong stance, does not have a strong habit, or otherwise lacks inclination to favor one side or another.
Every alignment can be 'good', 'evil', 'lawful', or 'chaotic' in the sense of how its played, whether or not it's disruptive, and whether or not it should be allowed. It ultimately comes down to the players, and the DM being clear on what any given alignment means in their hosted setting (as well as what behavior is encouraged & what behavior isn't allowed).
I introduced a Goblin fighter as an NPC/sidekick in a campaign, as he was the only survivor of a group of goblin bandits my players killed. He technically had an evil alignment. He grew and changed as he learned from the party, probably ending up closer to chaotic good by the end. It was a lot of fun watching players who considered themselves chaotic chastising him for wanting to do selfish or greedy things. I think alignment is an interesting starting point for any character, but there’s always room for growth and change throughout the story.
Loving the Dragonlance mention. I adore that series and world. Just about to wrap up my group's playthrough of Shadow of the Dragon Queen tomorrow
Cackled at the World Anvil ad read in the style of “Uk’otoa! …uk’otoa …”
On-topic:
I’m playing a Lawful Neutral necromancer in CoS right now. (The very utilitarian form of necromancy: “I’d rather these meat bags die than living beings” or “It’s not different than taking boots of a corpse, they’re not using their bodies anymore.”)
Or, at least she *was* LN when the campaign began.
Of course she’s been tempted by Strahd and other dark powers in the world. And now she’s trending toward a more Lawful Evil outlook.
But then again, I am working with my DM on this behind the scenes, and I’m explicitly never being disruptive.
Doing and saying fucked up things? Sure. But never at the cost of anyone else’s fun.
My favourite PC was a chaotic neutral wizard, and I just played him as being selfish and callous, but ultimately his self-interest always "happened" to line up with the party's goals (though of course, the means by which he achieved them would differ ethically). The key is usually to find a core justification, and the best one is the Guardians of the Galaxy quip:
"why do you want to save the galaxy?"
"Because I'm one of the idiots who live in it!"
The solution that works for my table (mileage may vary) is that in session 0 I give a "baseline" as to what, in MY campaigns, defines each allignment, with the added caveat that no one always acts perfectly accoring to their allignement. So I do expect to people to act accoridng to their chosen allignment for the most part, but also allow them some leeway in situations (perhaps the Lawful Good fighter would break the law in certain situations, depending on what the reason may be).
Great outro on this one, very energetic and entertaining.
One of the best characters I ever played a lawful evil character, and after going through the experience I think I realized what one of the main issues is, particularly vis-a-vis banning evil alignments: as you said, it's less the alignment itself, and more the type of player who generally gravitates towards it. Which is to say, my character who was evil worked well in the very heroic fantasy story, because I, for the lack of a different way to put it, didn't expect him to "win," or maybe a better phrase might be, I didn't expect him to not experience consequence....
I think a lot of friction start to show up when the person who's wanting to abuse being evil, or chaotic neutral, are really any alignment, to act disruptively is generally that they also don't expect there to be consequences in the game world which would make sense if your character was acting the way that "the way my character would act.". And that's part of the reason why it gets disruptive, because it breaks the world (I mean, and obviously it's disrespectful to the other players most of the time).
I knew that my character was temporarily aligned with the party, but ultimately there was likely going to be a violent differing of opinions towards the end of the campaign, and a whole reason why that worked, is because I sat down looked at my character and realized, "yeah this is what he would do, and there's no expectation on my side that it's going to end well for him."
I usually only worry about my player characters' alignment if they consider it the sole defining feature of their character. I generally don't even mention if we are using alignment in my games.
Discussion about alignment including Dragonlance characters, and no reference to the Tasselhoff Burrfoot effect? Kender being the leading example of Chaotic Neutral / Disruptive player magnets
While I did not put a whole lot of emphasis on alignments during Session 0, I honestly think that I should. Because there is a difference between how a character acts vs. how a player perceives their character vs. how everyone else perceives it. That is a lot of layers and sometimes it's not always in alignment which makes it hard for RP. I think that making a case on alignment and how people wish to be perceived in their actions would help to smooth things over before any players become problems at the table or game.
Having done some Myer-Briggs tests for fun lately, I feel like Alignment should be treated similarly. A loose idea of your character's personality, but not the be-all-end-all.
I currently have a character in the works who is a Lawful Evil Wizard (not the one I talked about in your server though).
Despite it being a heroic tale, this guy is a Volstrucker agent send to keep an eye on the adventuring party he'll be joining and report back. He'll do good when needed, he'll be the devils advocate if that were to be needed, yet he wouldn't do outright evil since his alignement comes from his job: a Volstrucker. His current assignment requires he do some good, but ultimately not for good ends. One mentality I went into when making him was "They'll be allies, friends even, with these people. But if war were to break out and they met on the battlefield, they'd be enemies on the spot.".
One might argue that something like Chaotic Neutral or just Neutral works better, but I whole heartetly disagree, LE works for this guy because he is very much working from his own and other codes of "honor", sometimes that will require doing some good.
I think that Palladium has the best alignment system, It has no Neutral alignment, just self serving! Palladium also has 2 good and 3 evil alignments along with 2 self serving alignments!
Palladium is still my go to for any kind of question of my characters morality.
I got fairly positive feedback for how I playing Chaotic evil:
1: My characters are thinking of the remaining party as "part of them", be it as their "catspaws", "henchmen", "Simp-legion" etc. . Hurting the rest of the party is thus nonsensical.
2: My evil characters are always affably evil.
3: The most important questions to ask yourself: First, what is my reason to adventure? Second, what is the reason for the rest of the party to adventure with me? Both of these need stronger answers then normally if I am evil.
4: My evil characters tend to be very fun to be around at parties, have access to great booze, are very personable or funny etc.
I played a couple of evil characters. One was a devil summoner, and worshiper of asmodeus, whose mother was in cleric of asmodeus and she traded her freedom for his, so his goal was to become as powerful as possible so that he would be in a better position. When he went down to the 9 house after his death. His motivation to stay loyal to the party was that good people as friends who would watch his back as a wrecked him when they became powerful enough and since he was, and the first mate of his freebooter crew, the only intra party issue 😊 was with a player who saw the "E" on his character sheet and decided that he couldn't be trusted.
I think another character I had was probably chaotic evil. This party was also not comprised of good people, they were basically a group of criminal enforcers and fixers who just did odd jobs. He was a forcibly retired arms dealer HQ/Lab got blown up with him inside, costing him his dominant hand, leaving him hell bent on revenge. Both genuinely bad people who are great party numbers. Although I did discover that The Gunsmith had a soft spot for kids and ended up making a cod piece out of the skull of a werewolf that hurt a child once. He turned it into a magic item for his Barbarian party mate. Never tick off an artificer
to this day, some of my favorite people still have this frustratingly narrow view of paladins as "The Police" which is....fucking uimaginative
Alignment make more sence since Planescape.
Additonaly, I have idea of chaotic neutral character - tiefling who doesn't want to die, so he made a pact with Dullahan. He is necromancer, who want achieve immotality, but also a doctor, that want to help people. He is torn by wanting to help others and help yourself. And also hate to do as others say he must do.
When I was in high school I banned Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic Evil, and Neutral Evil for a while. Lawful Evil was allowed, but nobody ever took that option.
I can see that, i feel like so many people who want to be complete assholes want to be CE, and when you tell them they can't they bump up to NE or CN and play the exact same character anyway doing the exact same shit.
On evil alignment: i actively try to drive my players into it in Curse of Strahd. The goal for the party remains the same but some players just let their characters decide scorched earth is the best way.
Part of the reason I bailed on AD&D as a GM (many, many years ago) was the existence of the alignment system.
I don't really use alignment after a bad experience I had in the first D&D campaign I was a player in that used alignment too prescriptively. I now prefer to use narrative poles that are part of my world setting. Big ones that I use are Arcane vs Divine and Nobility vs Guilds. These are major factors in my setting, and how a character feels about these issues say a lot more about their actions and goals than an abstract alignment chart.
I only ban chaotic evil characters, unless it's an evil campaign where all bets are off. I actually love having lawful evil characters in my normal parties. In my experience, those Machiavellian types get sh*t done and make the game more interesting as a result.
In my GM'ing days (last decade and a half), I've noticed that a much more efficient (and CLEAR) way to put alignements isn't what a character does, but WHY, and under this light I wholeheartedly agree with you, Mike: description, not prescription (i.e. they tell you the high end reasons why your character would do X, rather than telling you what your character should do).
My go to example is set in Barovia: LG human paladin, LN monk, CE orc barbarian (me) and a couple more people I honestly don't remember. Doesn't get more polarised than that, right? This was real play, btw: the whole thing happened more or less spontaneously.
Situation goes like this: we're trying to leave Strahd's Castle, CE orc barbarian starts to respect the LN monk's capacity to take no shit from noone and kill almost anything on sight, but eventually the monk goes down and the orc carries him (why will be clear later).
We get to a door that requires a blood sacrifice: the other two folks say to offer the monk, since he's unconscious and we don't have healing, might as well stop dragging around literal (almost) dead weight.
I'll never forget the face my friend playing the LG human paladin made when I, the CE orc barbarian, fully agreed with him that the LN monk was NOT to be fed to the door.
He asked why.
I, in character, answered "Because his (the monk's) head is mine to take, not Strahd's. He will live."
It was a one shot, so we never got to do that, but it shows how alignments are much more efficient when used to explain why instead of dictate what.
And, yes, I am very much of a cynic xD
I've never banned a single alignment, and I won't start now XD
I once played the Bastard son of a demon lord, and he was... Neutral Evil or Lawful Evil, and he worked well in the party, the DM knew I was evil, the players didn't, but when it came time for me to betray them as our goals didn't align, instead of bitching, they found that moment really fun, and sure, I died, but it was a super fun moment. Now If you don't want party infighting, I suggest a moving alignment system where the alignment of the evil member(s) slowly shift as they learn to value the good in the world.
Now Sadly, all evil alignments, Chaotic Neutral AND Lawful good get a bad rep but I think they lies with whoever DMs/Teaches the players, As it is VERY easy to give examples of the alignments and then the players will more or less associate like Lawful Good with a Superman like Bland character, or Chaotic Neutral as the That Guy or Edgy rogue, or Evil alignments as Murderhobos and party killers... I feel like it should be like something in the DMG or PHB that every alignment can be played in MANY different ways, similar to how two fighters are never the same.
But Overall, I feel like Banning Alignment, like Banning Multiclassing, Feats, races etc if you're new is.... okay, but not recommended, if you're scared that someone at your table will abuse it, give em the benefit of the doubt, and if they break the trust, take em aside and communicate, that's the Key aspect to this hobby, COMMUNICATION!
Amazing video btw and an interesting topic Mike ^^
My current character is CN, because he’s torn between good and evil. Overall, he will be good to people, and that is his base approach to people, but if you piss him off (usually by harming someone he likes), he will kill you. He’s shot several people in the back as they were running away after their ambush failed, and he dedicated himself to killing all of the bandits that belonged to the group that raided a caravan his friends owned to the point that he resisted the idea the leader was the princess under mind control and therefore could not be killed until it was blatantly obvious. He loves helping people, and has turned down a path to power that required him to abandon people a city to potential destruction, but when he finds the guy who once held him hostage he plans to kill him slowly and painfully enough that if he actually goes through with it he might actually become straight evil.
In this case, evil does not represent how willing he is to mistreat people, but rather how extreme he is willing to go when dealing out vengeance, and it pairs interestingly with the party member who is moving towards become a LG Paladin and is trying to encourage the party to be more merciful. We’ve talked a lot about the progression of the party to make sure our characters aren’t going to become incompatible, and I’m really interested to see how our characters grow together.
I use to be of the "ban evil" camp. And then I grew up.
Now every time someone wants to bring an evil character to my table, I simply ask why. If their answer indicates an excuse to troll, then I know and can decide whether I'm OK with the lulz they wanna bring to in my game (And sometimes it's yes...)
one of my favourite characters was evil. Belladonna the Drow sorceress. she was with the group to get enough gold to hire an army to overthrow the city that banished her. she went along with the group. we were trying to solve the mystery of hell portals that kept opening. occasionally she snuck out to do a little murder to get back gold the party had spent on informants ect. She died holding back 3 hell hounds so the group could escape. actually i misunderstood the dm and thought they were a lot more damaged than they were. They survived her burning hands and tore her to shreds.
My main issue with alignment is when it's woven into game mechanics. Alignments as character action guidelines or shorthands to tell other players a broad strokes sense of your character is all well in good; telling someone your character is Lawful Neutral carries very different implications than saying they're Neutral Good. But when tied to mechanics it has a lot more impact, as alignment can be quite subjective as to where the lines are drawn (especially since those lines are rarely crisp and bold). And if you have a player and a DM in disagreement on where those lines are drawn, something that's not likely to come up until said line is "crossed" in game, you suddenly get into a philosophical debate in which neither side can truly be objectively right more often than not. So the GM makes a final ruling about what does and doesn't count as being in alignment and suddenly your paladin/cleric is neutered until they "repent" (if they even can) for something you thought was still justified within your interpretation of your alignment. It adds a lot of subjectivity to more concrete rules that you can't truly iron out in a session zero.
I don't think alignment has been tied to mechanics directly in D&D since 3.5, but that's really the only issue I have with the alignment system. If it's only narrative shorthand, there's nothing wrong with the alignment, only potentially how people might interpret it (which is where you get things like Lawful Stupid) or are otherwise using the alignment as a cover for what they know is bad behavior.
Was curious if you actually use World Anvil and if you would ever consider making a video about it?
Players need to know/reminded that alignment doesn't define their character but it's the other way around.
As a DM I use alignment as a "at a glance' tools for NPCs and monsters so I would know how they would act/react without needing to have their detailed Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws (I still use that for specific NPCs).
For PCs I'm not a stickler on alignment although I ban CN/CE PCs in that they tend to be disruptive at my table ("That's what my character would do!") and waste my precious free time as DM. I outright ban murderhoboing as a result.
Premise: Jack Skellington is undeniably a Lawful Evil (or at least, Evil aligned) character. He is the proud *mayor* of a town of *pure evil,* and hijacks his loyal citizens/friends' normal routines, kidnaps a man, and traumatises (potentially kills) hundreds of children, all over what was essentially a _whim_ he cooked up during a midlife crisis for nobody's benefit except himself.
Argument: If you say you _wouldn't_ want to play D&D with Jack Skellington, you're a fucking liar.
I rest my case
What's more frustrating is someone trying to twist alignment by going, "From their perspective, they're Lawful Good" after having their NPC assault another NPC that didn't do anything to them, which that was point the DM was using for the conflict. And it's like, no, that's not a Lawful Good character. Lawful Good doesn't just attacks someone out from nowhere. If you attack someone over prejudice, unless they're like the demons froms Freieren where it's confirmed they're soulless monsters to trick and sabotage their foes, then the character is most likely leaning closer to the Evil alignment
Well stated. I’ve watched the game change over the years from 1’st edition to 5’th. It is possible to intergrade an evil aligned character within a group but difficult! To do evil for a higher good goal. Not something I would recommend for an inexperienced DM, or a group of players that your unfamiliar with. Too often ones “good” aligned ideologies interfere with the character on the fringe of evil or caught in the act of. Even breaking down into PvP. Overall stay on the side of good for the group. If they want to go evil. Maybe a one shot as an evil group, or small group of sessions of evil. You could fold the actions of that evil group into an existing campaign.
What you do is only a small aspect of your morality. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still evil. Just like doing the wrong thing for the right reasons isn't automatically evil. For example, every adventuring party is a band of remorseless serial killers. Full stop. Every single one. Good, evil, lawful, chaotic, everywhere inbetween. They are *all* remorseless serial killers.
I've never really liked D&D alignment because of its ambiguity, and I instead really resonate with more specific traits, like the Ideals/Flaws/Bonds system introduced in 5e, the soon-to-be-expanded edicts & anathema from Pathfinder 2e (though also these terms are very... Catholic), and The Dark Eye's intensive focus on local customs when it comes to describing cultural backgrounds of player characters.
If I were to run a game that uses alignment, I'd only ever really use the Lawful-Chaotic axis, while also stressing that neither is good or evil, that they really are two different philosophies that match cosmic forces, in the very Moorcock-ian sense. That even makes spells that detect alignment fine. There's no "oh this person is EVIL" option, it just gives a hunch where someone lands philosophically and how that character might function within the cosmic scale, if they ever were to become relevant.
Then again, in the past eighteen months or so I've also become very critical of the six specific D&D ability scores, both for their ambiguity and their implications, so my opinion is pretty niche.
The weirdest take I ever heard about alignment was a group who vigorously maintained that, rules as written, a True Neutral character who killed a chaotic evil enemy was then *required* to kill a lawful good opponent next, to keep the multiverse in balance. So weird in so many ways!
3.5 also told you straight up PC's where heroic characters and should pick good alignments.
On the subject of banning evil alignments. I do that. If I DM getting to play an evil PC is something the player earns. It comes with trust. I would never let a random freshly met person play an evil PC, but my friends Steve who I have known for over 15 years and introduced me to D&D, yeah if he wanted an evil PC, I'd trust him enough to play one.
When it comes down to it, it's all about trust with players. If you trust your players you don't even need a rule book just freeform jazz your way through a great story and great game. Other times you might stick to the core rule books of PHB, MM & DM only and stick to RAW all the way because that's what you have to do.
I have been playing and running D&D since the early 1980's; I've played every edition that has ever existed (yes even 4th, though only once :))
I have never outright banned alignments. But, I have always demanded from the player the answer to the question: "how will this character mesh with the rest of the party?" And 9 times out of 10, it works out great. However, as time has passed, and editions been released there are fewer and fewer "mechanical" reasons to use alignment (no penalties for breaking with chosen alignment, few abilities/spells that target alignment, even deities have several alignments "holy" classes can choose from and still worship).
As a result, in the last 5e campaign I ran, in session zero I stated, "I will not be taking alignment into consideration in this campaign. If you (the players) want to write something down on your character sheet to help describe your PC, that's OK. I don't care what it is, nor am I going to hold you to it. During play, do what you feel is right for your character AND the party." All five players did in fact write down something, no one chose lawful and no one chose evil. The campaign ran for more than three years and 12-13 levels without any real "morality issues".
"evil" is subjective, one's person evil is another "i have to do what needs to be done" ect Alignments are fluid like anything else about a persons personality, motivations ect
So i once had a lawful good character, and i forget why but the party was going to break into some rich guys manor and rob the place. There was way more reason to this besides monetary gain but not a good enough reason for my character to be on board. So i told the group if they did this i wouldnt be able to help but wouldnt stop them or work against them, they agreed to this. Then atleast one player got really mad i didnt come fight the guards when things started going sideways.
Keep in mind on the whole have a reason to work with the party thing, the campaign was sold to us as "Evil Dragon Hunting", and my character and their limitations were talked about with the dm before the campaign even began
You could always make an anti-villain liike Dexter Morgan. Your motives and methods are evil, but it just so happens that you make life a little safer for the public by doing the sorts of things few have the skills or stomach for, but occasionally wish they did.
The central problem with alignment is that most people aren't philosophers and don't have comprehensive and self-consistent ideas about what the alignments are, in the first place. What does it mean to be "good" or "evil", "lawful" or "chaotic". For that matter, what does it mean to be "neutral", since one can be passively neutral or actively neutral, and those are going to result in two very different worldviews. FWIW, I generally play Neutral Good characters, because IRL, I am a libertarian, and that is how I interpret what a belief in Liberty demands of people, beginning with the Principle of Non-Aggression.
This can lead to conflicts with other players, because often players don't really care about whether or not initiating violence is justified while playing though a setting/scenario/session, and DMs and authors often don't craft settings/scenarios/sessions in a way that allow PCs to progress through a story without initiating unjustifiable violence. Far too often, there's a simplistic assumption of "we're the good guys, and they are the monsters/bad guys, so murder is automatically justified".
In my last campaign, one of the players was clearly playing his PC in a very selfish and disruptive manner. I never did figure out whether or not his PCs alignment was supposed to be "evil" of any kind, but he sure did play it that way, in my opinion. At the same time, my PC would flatly refuse to initiate combat unless it was absolutely unavoidable, even though the DM had clearly designed the scenario to require us to wantonly commit homicide in order to move the plot forward.
I am reluctant to let people play anything outside of 'good' because people take advantage of the alignment. If I can't trust people to do things that won't be disruptive/antagonistic, then I won't let them. There are a few people I trust to be neutral or evil. Many people will pick 'evil' so that they can punish people in-game for out of game stuff. It's really tough. It really boils down to trust and respect.
I make an alignment cube instead using these spectrums:
Authority Vs Liberty
Advancement vs Institution
Altruism vs Tribalism
different extremes or disinterest in taking a side can be considered evil in these,
an emperor who rules with an iron fist
an anarchist who wants a world built on might is right
an unfeeling scientist who does everything in service of progress
a church contented with keeping the masses under their thumb
a unifier who sends help to suppress rebellions in allied kingdoms
an orc warlord getting vengance for their opressed tribe by wiping out all others
and for the flipside of these
a paladin who sticks to the code of doing what is right.
a freedom fighter standing up for people's liberties
a researcher who wants to spread literacy through the printing press
a saintess who upholds tradition to ensure that the world isn't overrun by demons
a samaritan who puts their trust in others and helps wherever they can
a loyal barbarian who protects those who she considers her found family.
If a player wants to be 'evil' that is too vague and two dimensional. if they wanna be a selfish characater, I can work with that. further, protection from good and evil and detect good and evil are more flavored to the individual's cultural conceptions of right and wrong a la matthew colvile's detect cowardice.
An evil character can definitely still be part of a party, they just need an aligned goal and a healthy lack of respect for authority. I would consider Nimona (from Nimona) to be a good example of evil alignment not necessarily meaning evil character.
Oh yeah, if you're gonna play an evil character, you need to swear out of character not to disrupt the game.
I love playing lawful good, there's a mischievous spectrum between breaking a law and being an obedient citizen
I think players often confuse the Lawful to Chaotic spectrum. These aren't just synonyms for good and evil. They are frameworks for how a character views and works within the rules and norms of the broader society they live in. It has less to do with personal behavior. A stoic could very well be Chaotic if they live in a society where hedonism was codified.
Lawful characters are letter-of-the-law characters. Neutral characters are spirit-of-the-law characters. Chaotic characters are ends-justify-the-means characters. If a norm stands in the way of their ultimate goal, then the Chaotic character will act to achieve that goal.
The good versus evil spectrum deals more with how people act on a personal level. Let's take the example of a society where slavery is "normal" and codified into law. The Lawful Good character might personally treat a slave with respect and kindness, but would not question their station nor the "right" of the slave owner to own the slave. Whereas the Chaotic Good character may actively try to free the slave or organize a rebellion to overthrow the society where slavery is codified.
If you think about Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, the Children of the Light are decidedly a Lawful faction, however, if you look at Eamon Valda, at least as played in the Amazon Prime series, he would be a Lawful Evil character.
Depending on the character's goals, even a Lawful or Neutral Evil characters can be great team players in a heroic party.
Let's take the simplest one. Getting rich and living in luxury. Where are they going to live in luxury? Probably in a city. For that having a good reputation is very helpful. Having a loyal group can be helpful. Which means not screwing them over for short-term gains. Not stealing from then. Not getting caught stealing or doing crimes in a city, which means better planning the characters crimes so thee character doesn't get caught. And so on.
Also, just because a character is evil, doesn't mean he can't do good.
As for Raistlin? It's quite simple. Even evil, he didn't like the goals of the evil goddess. What she envisioned was not a world he wanted to live in. Sure, he joined her forces, but only to stop them.
Like Mike pointed out playing an evil character doesn't mean you have to be dickish and disruptive. You can play a character with ulterior motive, a character who's a double agent, a character who's a charming charlatan who's lying about who they are to hide past criminal behavior that they're on the run from, a werewolf who embraces the curse so they can control it but embracing curse=evil in D&D so mabye that's something they're grappling with and could grow past.
Evil characters are like the flips side of the coin of lawful stupid, it can be abused with the "but muh alignment" argument. As Runesmith once suggested; "Evil in D&D.......just means harmful" which I interpret as they have no constraints and like everything in D&D can be very diverse and varied in how they are played, motivations and ideals can be skewed. You can make a villain to hero, a tragic villain or just someone who's a criminal who's willing yo put aside *most* of their vile tendencies.
Obviously 1 evil character in a gaggle of goodie two shoes adventurers is cause for alarm but again, like Mike said if the player has no intention of actively or passively making the game less fun for others then there's not much harm. Why ban it unless you just want to ruin that player's fun?
A functioning group can have both good and evil people in it, as well as lawful and chaotic. Like, anybody who has had a job before, at any point in their life, knows this. Every workplace has people that fit into every alignment. And largely, the group functions as its supposed to despite that. An adventuring party is no different.
I would consider an evil character, but refuse to state exactly which evil.
It would depend, because I haven't played almost any d&d yet, and I Wouldn't want it to be my first character , or second
Personally ive ended up just not using alignment anymore, I just found it FAR to reductive, and ever since using Edicts and Anathemas of Pathfinder I just that same basic idea for 5e and such now as well that uses alignment. I think its just nicer to know what a player's character is about in the end.
I don't like alignment*, but when playing in games that use it I try and figure out which of the nine alignments best fits whatever I figure out for my character, while also fitting the campaign concept. Meanwhile, I know Prudence in Oxventure is an evil character. I'm not sure what flavour of evil, but Jane's made no secret that there's an E on her character sheet, but plays her in an entirely non-disruptive way who works towards the party's goals.
*Actually I do like alignment, I just don't like alignment in the D&D tradition. 'chaotic vs lawful' and 'good vs evil' are too abstract for me to use as roleplay prompts, compared to even stuff like Animon Story's character virtue (which then interacts with a couple of other roleplay prompts you put onto the sheet during character creation - their desire, and arguably their flaw), which while not framed as alignment - there's no spectrum of x to y, they're positive traits that your character embodies, even if they don't know it yet - does the thing advocates of alignment in D&D who I understand why they like alignment claims it does, but in a way that actually works for me rather than feeling like abstract nonsense.
I have something to go on if I glance at a sheet and it says "virtue - wisdom; desire - have all the answers; flaw - lacking self confidence." in a way I just don't from "chaotic good." - I know why I picked chaotic good for that character, he didn't trust systems of authority, government, and the like, but would go out of his way to help people less fortunate than himself, but 'chaotic good' while translating that into mechanical terms isn't concrete enough for me to work as a prompt outside of the situations that lead to me writing CG on the sheet.
Its like people don't think an "evil" character can be a good friend. Which is strange because the reason the character is evil doesn't have to have anything to do with the way they interact with friends. They might be evil because they will choose to burn a town if given the profitable option to do so. Honestly I am not much of a fan of vague descriptors because no one agrees on what they mean anyway. Like the Chaotic good rogue is still robbing people left and right. Yet the chaotic evil Rogue has to create friction by upsetting allies?
I have alignments in my game, but I can't really be bothered to focus on them. I just let my players know if their actions are legal/acceptable in the society they are in
Never really understood why people had a problem with what alignments meant. They're general guides for morality and worldviews. Maybe this just made sense to me alone for some reason?
Lawful - Rules exist for a reason, even if they hurt me sometimes, and authority figures usually know what they're doing. Or a personal moral code. Not anally upholding rules or blindly following orders.
Chaotic - If a rule or authority figure ends up harming me I'm willing to ignore it. Not disregarding rules or doing things just for the "chaos".
Good - I value other's lives and well being above personal gain or maybe my own. Generally want the least collateral damage.
Evil - I value my own life or personal gain over other's, ends justify the means, generally selfish behavior not kicking puppies for the sake of it.
Neutral - Look at things on a case-by-case basis, not apathetic or "how could I possibly choose between the king who wants people to not die and the dragon who wants to torture people by skinning them alive? I'm morally grey."
I'm not necessarily a big fan of alignment and I got no love for wangrods that just like to be disruptive but I really dislike murder hobo players. That is one reason I feel some sort of morality structure can be beneficial. If somebody wants to play an "evil" character but can work with party and has some sort of personality than I'm down. If your a "good" character that is confused when my character has a problem that you casually massacred an entire town of people that just happened to live in the same cave as the treasure you wanted...well we might not be able to play together.
This is a good channel. I like Mike.
Okay, here's my (maybe) hot take: alignment has no relation to character behaviour. It is neither prescriptive nor descriptive.
Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil are actual, tangible forces within the world of D&D, and they are in constant conflict. Alignment is simply a declaration of which side of those conflicts the character is on.
An evil action can be done to bring about a greater good, or vice versa, so what a character does has no bearing on what their alignment is.
Really good video, as always, but I *_hate_* that people keep analyzing problems with D&D's alignment system from the perspective that it's only problem players and authoritarian GMs misreading and misinterpreting the rules that makes it a problem. Pick up a copy of the AD&D PHB (either edition) and read the descriptions of the nine alignments-- those are _personality disorders_ and that is the black-letter text of the game rules that DMs are encouraged to _punish_ players for deviating from.
Sure, everyone with half a brain just ignored the alignment rules and pretended they said... whatever actually made their game work. But that doesn't mean that the people who had problems were playing the game wrong or... failing to understand that the morality rules had been written by a racist psychopath and were best left out entirely.
So yeah... video suggestion: a deep dive on the AD&D description of the alignments and how their screaming incompatibility with human morality caused all of the problems we're still trying to fix today.
Gygaxian Morality: Not Even Once
Generally, I toss them out and go with a basic cosmic association from the 4e cosmos - Far Realm, Primordial/Titans, Astral (Gods), with the side Evils (the Abyss and Infernal) but 99% of people are Unaligned. Then characters act and react in a mix of background, familial culture, social environment, factions, personal faith, etc.
Then as I build on the setting, I make Asmodean evil very ends justify the means and personal ambition over all, to better reflect Asmodeus' role in the pre-history and Bael Turath. And the Abyss is an alien corruption from Tharzidun's shard of evil taken from a previous creation destroyed by the Primordials (taking a bit of demons from Exalted 1st edition). Then the gods are always in petty, Antiquity-type conflicts but generally they represent their domains instead of concepts of good or evil in an objective sense, more in a relativistic context.
Currently the party is more or less 1 Lawful Evil type with a personal identity issue (raised Asmodean, slowly learning the society and culture he had lost in childhood), 2 Neutral Goods, a couple of selfish Neutral types (NE) a bit like Amos Burton from The Expanse, a slightly less selfish Neutral, and one who is more or less low-key neutral with lawful tendencies.
Yes, there is nothing inherently wrong with Alignments. They're just basic Guidlines and great for remembering a characters priorities.
For instance; Chaotic for me means they're Emotionally Reactive.
& Neutral Alignments mean they only care about what effects Their life and/or what They care about.
I've seen some really lame intepretations of true neutral. Things like "they have no opinions/beliefs," and "true neutral characters cant be adventurers/heroes, because they don't get involved in conflict."
I have a character (that I havent been able to play yet, because getting a group together is hard) who I gave the True Neutral alignment because he doesn't believe in absolutes. Laws are necessary, but they're not inherently good or right, and he will break the law without hesitation if he thinks the law is wrong or stupid. He would prefer if the law was somehow perfect, it just isn’t. The concepts of hard and fast good or evil are abstract and nonsensical to him. He's fully willing to do something broadly considered evil, if he thinks its the best course, and he might think that something broadly considered good is actually wrong, from his point of view. He has zero interest in living by what other people consider good or evil, and he can be rather selfish, but he does care about minimizing harm, if he doesn't have to sacrifice himself to do it. His own life is his first priority, and everyone else's lives are second on the list (in terms of survival).
I think you just described the exact definitive of what True Neutral actually means. No absolutes, everything is circumstancial.
Just an observation, not a criticism: I'm a little puzzled by your regular references to the move toward heroic fantasy in recent editions. I have played D&D in all its editions as they were published, and no group I've been in ever saw it as anything but heroic fantasy. When we wanted a change from heroic fantasy, we switched from D&D. I realise not every group plays the same (I also was never part of a group, or even heard of one, that used the shared world, real times passes in game trope you mentioned way back), but for every RPGer I know personally, D&D has always been the heroic fantasy RPG, that's its niche.
Commenting to test the algorithm's alignment
Eh, I still prefer to edge away from evil. Mostly because I don’t trust people to play that one well. It is possible to play it and be able to get along well with the party, heck I played a good character who was teamed up with an evil one and we still got along in a friendly manner. But mostly? In most of my experiences people aren’t that great at conveying that complexity and evil can be complex and when evil is simple….well you aren’t likely to be able to justify getting along with the party if you go with a simplified evil. So yeah, I find people aren’t great at it. Also, hate saying this, I find the constant “doom and gloom” mentality that evil aligned designed characters a bit tiresome. It’s one note and a flat one at that. Least for me. But that isn’t to say I haven’t seen or even played a well done evil character. It can be done. So I wouldn’t say I across the board that it’s a bad thing. I will say that it requires building a report and trust with those you play with to pull it off and make it organic and still cohesive to the party, because dnd is still a collaborative group game after all, something that doesn’t always mesh well with the usual trope of loner evil types, which is the majority of those we know in media.
Personally I prefer playing neutral characters, least that is what most I know label it as. I rarely will play lawful anything. This does mean I play a lot of grey morality. But mostly this is because my play style is one I have had others describe as “subtle roleplaying” and also “a normal person with a skill doing the best they can in the situation.” I play into emotions and parse out information on whatever feels relevant at the time for backstories with mentalities of my characters in mind. I’ll have them be say, open about their childhood memories but maybe they not tell you they watched their lover die protecting them from a vicious animal attack until after a similar one attacks the party. I might describe they have scars on their arms that are distinctive for lightning strikes without directly saying they got hit by such a thing before. I might say they wake from a nightmare in a cold sweat despite the dm not saying they dreamed and then have the character decide they can’t sleep and go find hobby or training to past the time until the rest of the party wakes. It’s little things that seem silly. Like dancing regularly, or playing a game of chess before bed, etc, that I use to try to convey. I describe the fear and emotions they have, quickly of course as I don’t like to monologue, but I am trying to make it understood where their head is at, if it’s obvious in a passive body language way. Just small things like posture, a tapping foot, lounging, a cocky grin, touching their locket, stuff like that. Anyway, yeah, so alignment…not exactly something I play by anyway but when I do it’s mostly neutral as it plays best into what I’m conveying.
I've never "banned" alignments, but I don't implement them in any way rules-wise. I don't find them to be a helpful concept at all, but if you want to write two words down on your character sheet because they mean something to you, fill your boots.
Our group doesn't pay much attention to alignment. It's still in the game, since certain spells and magic items are affected by it, but otherwise nobody really cares.
Trying to ban troublesome alignments doesn't really work, since (as Mike points out) players who are determined to be jerks will find an excuse, no matter what. Better to just say it directly: "I don't care what your alleged alignment is, if you start ruining the game for everyone else, you're gonna get kicked."