Quote from: jhkim on April 29, 2023, 03:19:35 PM

Quote from: rytrasmi on April 29, 2023, 02:07:28 PM

Quote from: jhkim on April 29, 2023, 01:52:15 PM
I don't think it's at all difficult to conceive of a handful of different religious attitudes. In my current campaign, I rely on a bunch of shortcuts because the basis for the religion isn't familiar, but it's been easy to get at least a little attitude.

It's not hard for a player to conceive of either a religious missionary who wants to convert people; or a zealous crusader who wants to kill all heathens. A handful of words can convey these, and then you immediately have two different reactions to Lawful vs Chaotic, compared to your shortcut.

So you use shortcuts, too. One of the several that I used is called alignment. Are we agreeing or disagreeing?

Agreed. The question is how good a shortcut alignment is.

And I don't think that can be answered in the absolute. It depends on the setting and the campaign and what one is going for.

For the campaigns that I've been in, I haven't felt like alignment would have been a useful shortcut. I used it in D&D games mostly in the 1980s, but after that I gave it up. But maybe for some people, it is useful - but if someone finds it useful, I'd want to hear in more detail about how the game was better for having used it.

I think a stumbling point in some discussion is failing to distinguish between having concepts like "law" and "chaos" in the *setting*, as opposed to the mechanics of alignment. For example, the Amber Diceless RPG adapts Zelazny's Amber novels, which have Amber representing a sort of order opposed by the Courts of Chaos. But the game doesn't have alignment rules. One can have law vs chaos or good vs evil in a game setting without alignment rules.

To be fair, the question posed by the thread is how to do alignment better, not is alignment useful/useless and to what degree. Aside from linking alignment to carrot/stick mechanics, I have found that it's also useful to quickly orient new players to a setting.

How to do it better, in my view, is to use alignment mechanics that are "balanced" in the sense that different directions have different carrots/sticks that are generally fair. Some of the examples given here are like that, i.e., Helveczia. A party of students is clearly offered motivation to sin, while a party of clerics is motivated oppositely. A mixed party could have an interesting dynamic. It's just one mechanic of many, and the students might still save the kitten from the tree because people are not automatons that merely follow cosmic directive.

Quote from: rytrasmi on May 01, 2023, 10:41:26 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on April 29, 2023, 10:17:24 PM
I'm honestly not sure how alignment would help in this scenario. If I'm dealing with a group of apparently hostile individuals I'm not even able to communicate with due to a language barrier I don't see how this leads anywhere but to some type of violent confrontation regardless of alignment. Even if they're not currently hostile, but just holding their knives out defensively in case a confrontation breaks out I'm gonna need more information about what's going on and what they're doing before making a decision. And there's nothing about alignment that's going to facilitate that. A Comprehend Languages spell might work, though, but I don't think my character has that one.

Even if she "knows" that followers of their god are normally evil she wouldn't just jump them unless they were hostile, because part of the precepts of Eilistrae is to convert evil drow and help them follow a path of cooperation with other races (same would apply when dealing with other evil creatures). And you can't have that if you just slaughter everyone just cuz they're "evil". Gotta try persuasion first.

This is your character so I can't argue about what she'd do.

I'm a simple guy. I see two different baskets of options when presented with these two scenarios:

A - Robed figures speaking strange language, knives in hand. Their deity shares my deity's alignment.

B - Robed figures speaking strange language, knives in hand. Their deity opposes my deity's alignment.

You're saying you would take the same approach in both situations. Okay, fair enough, that's how you roll. But it seems not that you find alignment useless. Rather, you choose to make alignment useless.

No, I'm saying that if the group is "apparently hostile" (what I got from your original post given the limited specifications) and I'm unable to communicate with them, violence looks like a forgone conclusion at that point regardless of anyone's alignment. I also mentioned that I'd need more information if they're not really hostile, but just holding knives.

I also mentioned that my character's goddess is about converting explicitly evil drow, which means that just because they don't share my character's alignment, that doesn't automatically give her carte blanche to go on a killing spree--at least, not if I wanna RP her as devoted to her goddess's precepts. Unless they're hostile or a threat to someone she's (ideally) supposed to try to make them "see the light", cuz you can't convert evil people if you just slaughter them on the basis that you read their alignment written on their faces.

This isn't trying to make alignment useless, but not treating it like it's set on stone, assume that I can automatically "know" someone's alignment just based on the holy symbols or identifying marks that they carry (what if they're simply a separate group of adventurers disguised as cult members, for example?), or that knowing someone's alignment alone is an adequate excuse to kill them.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 01, 2023, 12:22:20 PM
No, I'm saying that if the group is "apparently hostile" (what I got from your original post given the limited specifications) and I'm unable to communicate with them, violence looks like a forgone conclusion at that point regardless of anyone's alignment. I also mentioned that I'd need more information if they're not really hostile, but just holding knives.

I also mentioned that my character's goddess is about converting explicitly evil drow, which means that just because they don't share my character's alignment, that doesn't automatically give her carte blanche to go on a killing spree--at least, not if I wanna RP her as devoted to her goddess's precepts. Unless they're hostile or a threat to someone she's (ideally) supposed to try to make them "see the light", cuz you can't convert evil people if you just slaughter them on the basis that you read their alignment written on their faces.

This isn't trying to make alignment useless, but not treating it like it's set on stone, assume that I can automatically "know" someone's alignment just based on the holy symbols or identifying marks that they carry (what if they're simply a separate group of adventurers disguised as cult members, for example?), or that knowing someone's alignment alone is an adequate excuse to kill them.

Okay, so doing alignment better means not doing alignment at all because it requires literal expression in-world (written on face) and because it often leads to simplistic approaches to problems (killing sprees)?

Quote from: rytrasmi on May 01, 2023, 03:01:24 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 01, 2023, 12:22:20 PM
No, I'm saying that if the group is "apparently hostile" (what I got from your original post given the limited specifications) and I'm unable to communicate with them, violence looks like a forgone conclusion at that point regardless of anyone's alignment. I also mentioned that I'd need more information if they're not really hostile, but just holding knives.

I also mentioned that my character's goddess is about converting explicitly evil drow, which means that just because they don't share my character's alignment, that doesn't automatically give her carte blanche to go on a killing spree--at least, not if I wanna RP her as devoted to her goddess's precepts. Unless they're hostile or a threat to someone she's (ideally) supposed to try to make them "see the light", cuz you can't convert evil people if you just slaughter them on the basis that you read their alignment written on their faces.

This isn't trying to make alignment useless, but not treating it like it's set on stone, assume that I can automatically "know" someone's alignment just based on the holy symbols or identifying marks that they carry (what if they're simply a separate group of adventurers disguised as cult members, for example?), or that knowing someone's alignment alone is an adequate excuse to kill them.

Okay, so doing alignment better means not doing alignment at all because it requires literal expression in-world (written on face) and because it often leads to simplistic approaches to problems (killing sprees)?

If by the initial wording of this question you're hinting at the original topic and title of this thread, I was just commenting on your original question that led to this side discussion rather than offering my take on how to do alignment better. My general take on alignment is that D&D alignment specifically is of limited use at best and disruptive at worse, often leading to simplistic approaches as you mention here. And that other forms of "alignment" or roleplaying guides are better at facilitating RP and suggesting character behavior, such as the M&M Allegiance system that Chris mentioned earlier upthread, or more explicit taglines, like personality traits, religion, motivation, etc.

In this specific example, it would make no sense for my character to kill "evil" enemies on the basis that they're (presumably) evil alone. There would need to be aggravating circumstances to push her over that edge. Though, if she was infiltrating a cultist hideout where she "knows" that the cultists actually did something serious, like sacrificing innocents or holding them captive for that purpose, she'll probably join others in the group in the use of stealth and hitting first and asking questions later. If she just happens upon some random cultists of an "evil" god, however, she'd be more like "Ya'll muthafuckas need Eilistrae!", and hold the Fireballs for when they try something.

EDIT/PS: I think that the use of alignment I think you were originally hinting at works more in the context of MMO style faction systems, like Alliance and Horde being hostile to each other by default. But that's a more two-dimensional approach to alignment that doesn't work with immersive style of role-playing and tend to lead to more metagame responses, and work better in settings that don't take themselves too seriously and are more about black and white confrontations were dialog is typically out of the question.