Alignment and brain damage - a new deal?

I was listening to the Happy Jacks podcast, and in a midst the jolly bantering someone suggested (not very seriously, I gather) the alignment one step beyond "chaotic good" namely "chaotic better".

I could dig that.

[From A to Z in Kalamar] Hobgoblins

On Tellene there are one race which in addition to humans, elves and dwarves have managed to build a civilization. I quite like the fact that it happen to be the hobgoblins.

Having humans in funny suits is not all that interesting, and the kind of anthopology 101 that Glorantha becomes in it's worse moments is probably not that fun either. Well, the latter might not be true if you like to read more than play, and enjoy canon debates, but let's ignore that for now.

So, hobgoblins are something special, and quite interesting without the above mentioned excesses. Two things define hobgoblins, and they are enough to build an alien enough society to be fun. Those two things are strength and honour. While strength is kind of self explanatory, it is very focused. It means you have to have the power, since power is strength, to control the most precious of all, someones life. Being able to kill, but not necessarily to do it, is a defining factor in the hobgoblin culture. The second one, honour, is all about doing something the right way. Exercising influence, or proving your ability is honourable. Now combining that with the value of strength is interesting.

Imagine you are fighting a hobgoblin, and you are actually a character of some standing. Should your weapon break, or you fall, your hobgoblin opponent might actually stop and yell to his subordinate to provide you with a weapon so the fight can continue! This makes me think of intelligent gamers who suddenly stricken by the brain damage that is alignment rules, will sometimes kill defenseless kobolds or orcish females and cubs "because they are evil". What's the honour in that?

Take one trait, and then another which seem to be slightly ajar from the first one and make them the basis of a demi-human culture and I think you'll have something interesting on your hands. How hobgoblins are treated in KoK is one of the subtler things I like with this setting.

I'm not alone in thinking alignment languages are silly

(edited: fixed line breaks, Arrgh!)

Question:
So if I may, where did the idea for aligment tongues come from? Do you see them as fully fleshed out languages?

Answer:
"As D&D was being quantified and qualified bu the publication of the supplemental rules booklets. I decided that Thieves' cant should not be the only secret language. thus alignment languages come into play, the rational being they were akin to Hebrew for Jewish and Latin for Roman Catholic persons.

I have since regretted the addition, as the non-cleric user would have only a limited vocabulary, and luttle cound be conveyed or understoon by the use of an alignment language between non-clerical users.

Cheers,
Gary"

(from Dragonsfoot)

Dragons, brain damage and dead horses

I just read a very good and imaginative post about how to re-think dragons, over here. I must say, though, that one of the reason the problem appears with the silly symmetry of evil and good dragons, is alignment. Alignment rots your brain. I've said so before.

It's not surprising that the designs get kind of stale, with more and more far-fetched breath weapons. If you have to shoehorn the fantastic into a narrow minded metaphysics you will get a narrow result. The fantastic is not about that. Dragons should be like humans, of all moral shades. And colour.

Yeah, I know I'm beating a dead horse. Go read that post linked above. It's good.

On a mission from God - playing Dogs in the Vineyard

Yesterday was a good day. Well, it was one of those days when I was running back and forth and felt like I didn't accomplish much, but I managed to experience a real live game session! I have had a drought since leaving Canada, but hopefully there will be some more precipitation from now on.

We made characters for Dogs in the Vineyard, and all three are interesting. Maybe the young female convert from the East is most flamboyant, but the others have interesting aspects. I like the intellectual sharpshooter, and the doubting theologian as well.

For those of you who have managed to miss it, DitV is a game about "Mormon gunslingers in a West that never was". It's not really about Mormons, and not really about the Old West as it was in our world, but something like it. What it is, is a game where actions have consequences and your morals force you to act and think about it. Everything that's causing brain damage about alignment just works out like it should in real life in this game, it feels real and meaningful. Also, it will blow your mind that you can have that much freedom of action as a player, and learn to feel serious feelings of regret about the consequences of that freedom.

The session was a bit short, but to my surprise we managed to get all three characters done, and initiate two of them. The latter is kind of like the Prelude in Vampire. You play out a scene or passage of scenes which happened before starting play and it will help you learn the game system, and kick start your brain into your newly designed persona.

My favourite scene was probably when one of the characters, who had a illicit sexual relation in his backstory, suddenly chanced upon a couple doing the nasty thing. He started berating them, and when the girl saw his hesitation she yelled "You would do it if you had the chance!" The look on the player's face was glorious to behold. It just became better when she then with a intuitive strike accused him of not being so innocent himself. Never have self doubt been so fun to act out at the game table. You know you have succeeded when a player is squirming on his chair and trying to get out of the mess, while at the same having a smile plastered on his face.

I just love Dogs. Thanks Vincent!

Moral and ethics in roleplaying - alignment causes brain damage

Today I'm going to join the rest of the blogosphere and talk about morality, ethics and good and evil. Compared to the mainline D&D faithful I'm a heretic, so don your asbestos suit! This might be considered by some as a rant or a flame. Here we go!

For as long as I've known about Dungeons & Dragons I've known about alignment. At day one I thought it was one of the must stupid things in a very stupid game. These days I've changed my attitude a bit, become older and knows a lot more about how a game system support a style or play or not. But, I still hate alignment. It causes brain damage.

I have heard, as have probably everyone who have played D&D, the phrase “You can't do that, you're lawful!” This is just plain ridiculous. How come everyone but me knows what my character feels, thinks and wants?

There are many problems with this phenomenon. First off is the problem that it limits player creativity and enjoyment. One of the great strengths of face to face roleplaying is that it totally open ended. Playing a computer game or a family board game you can only do what the designer thought of. In a RPG you should be able to explore and stretch your legs. It's the biggest strengths that roleplaying games have.

A second problem is that it causes rigidity of thought, and turns mental powerhouses into vegetables. It causes brain damage. Since there are rules for what can't be done, there's no room for common sense. Suddenly you have sensible human beings who might be loving, caring friends and parents in their normal existence but now have become bloodthirsty murderers and amoral robots. Find a tribe of orcs, with females and kids? Suddenly one of the brain dead will say that they must be killed, “because they are evil” or “because they are chaotic”! I have seen it happen and every time I see it, it disgusts me.

So, if someone say that the Rules say it is right to kill sentient beings because they are Evil, what does that say about those who act upon that command? From my point of view it tells me that those who argues that RPGs should be banned because they teach the kids satanism could very well have a solid cause for banning, if they argued that they taught intolerance. Just the kind of intolerance that makes you want ban stuff, incidentally. I'd say it's perfectly fine to play a game where the player characters are, say, hired by the secret police in a totalitarian state in our world. What is cause for concern is what the players do with the responsibility. Having alignment to fall back to absolve the player from morals, and cause an "I only followed orders” mentality. I'd say it's flat out dangerous behaviour.

Now, maybe you object that it's just guidelines for roleplaying, and a starting point to ground the actions of your character. If it is “just a help”, why are there rules for punishing someone who acts out of line? If a rulebook tells me what is right and wrong in life I object (even if I agree!!), since I don't like to have someone elses morals forced down my throat, thank you very much! An observation from experience also tells me that those who claim it's just guidelines probably will be the ones shouting and arguing when someone acts against alignment later on in the session. Bad players are one objection to that observation, but I claim it's the aforementioned brain damage, since they seem to be just fine players as long as the "A" word is not mentioned.

If that wasn't enough there are more things which makes me rage about alignment. How does it work with spells like Known Alignment? Game mechanics have broken down the wall between player and character and suddenly the world knows about the rules of AD&D! The same thing applies to the concept of Evil or Good artifacts of detection spells. The only way to make that work out is for Good and Evil to be relative to the individual. If a cleric of a sun god encounters a warhammer sanctified to the good of darkness it will probably feel evil.

Since some people feel very strongly that moral relativism is more dangerous than HIV, I'd like to add that there's nothing saying that acts and ideals in the game has to be floating free in a sea of post-modernism just because of what I just said. You as a player probably have a set of moral values, an idea of right and wrong. Use those ideas in your game! It's not as if the game will degenerate into an unruly mess just becuase you don't have the crutch of alignment rules. A game about moral issues, where the choices made by the players come from their own convictions, have a much higher chance of being moving and engaging for real. Take a game like Dogs in the Vineyard. In that game your character have the power to define doctrine, and to meter out justice on the spot. You can overturn it all. But, when I've played it, it has every time been a question of us as players asking ourselves how far we really feel comfortable taking that power! Playing a game like that teaches understanding, not intolerance. Probably it will also give you some idea about what evil actually is.

That was a bit long, and rantish. But, I feel quite strongly about this. Alignment is not just a badly designed rule, it has social consequences that I feel are worth fighting. Feel free to disagree, but read what I wrote one more time and try to get what it is I'm trying to say.