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Thoughts on D&D alignment
13/4/05 15:36A *very* belated response to Meaghanchan. Very scattered.
It's not a question of being good or bad. As McKee says... the most important thing in determining your character is what do they want, and what are they willing to do to get it?
If you can answer that about your character, you'll know how they'll react in any given situation, without resorting to an inherently broken alignment system that doesn't really tell you anything about your character and just leads to the most clicheed characters imaginable.
This much, and the basic point in general, I absolutely agree with. However, I might quibble with some of the details--this isn't disagreement, necessarily, but just getting my own thoughts on the matter clear.
D&D is very bad for modeling a more realistic model of the world than the type of heroic fantasy that assumes that objective good and evil (a) exist and (b) are self-evident. Try to go more realistic and things like alignment restrictions and Detect Evil stop making sense at all, and it's time to either stop using D&D or else house-rule alignment away.
It's true that people don't do things because they are good or evil. But, on the list of selfish priorities people have, "I want to see myself as a good person" and "I want other people to see me as a good person" can be very important. D&D characters, assuming them to be non-anachronistic, probably believe in the existence of good and evil. Lawful/chaotic alignment makes sense, seen on a priority basis: how important to me is working within the social contract to achieve my goals? I don't think that it should be one of the two major axes for character development, though.
Human concepts of good and evil are largely dependent on time and place, but D&D in particular and heroic fantasy in general tend to rely on the objective existence of good and evil, and the objective existence of deities, for their plot points. So I think that GMs can, if they wish, say that good and evil exist for the purposes of the campaign. (This doesn't mean pigeonholing people into good and evil categories; 'good' and 'evil' can be labels for actions and priorities). But they have to be explicit about this, and they have to be explicit about what the characters know about good and evil. In a world where different deities have different conceptions of what priorities are good ones, who or what is going to overrule the deity and say "this is good," "this is bad"? If we have any intuitive knowledge of good and evil at all, it can probably be brought down to the bottom line of empathy and fear of suffering: I don't like suffering, therefore my own suffering is bad. Other people are like me, so they probably don't like suffering either, and therefore their suffering is bad. Assuming that no one has objective knowledge of good and evil, they should at least be able to reason out that much.
Now...my main problem with D&D alignment is that it says that Neutral means either 'eh, I don't really care' or 'balance is in itself a good thing.' It is INSANE to switch sides just because your side is winning. The latter idea about neutrality is just...stupid. And I absolutely reject that "Eh, torture, I could care less either way" is a neutral attitude. It's an evil one, if you take the standpoing that evil exists. It's because D&D assumes otherwise that you get these awful villains who do terrible things just for the fun of it. I would tweak it so that the neutral attitude is "Yeah, torture's kind of bad, but if there's a good enough reason..."
I can't really be content to say that no priorities are any better than other priorities. I want to be able to say that it's bad prioritizing to put more oil, for now, over protecting Arctic wildlife; I want to say that it's bad prioritizing to put national security over not torturing people; I want to say that it's bad prioritizing to value paying $5 for a T-shirt over ensuring that people have fair working conditions. And I want, at the same time, to recognize that not everyone has the same moral system and we really have no sure way of knowing if something is right or not.
This got really long.
I think, if the GM can make up the geography and the politics and the deities, then the GM can make up the metaphysical ethical system of the world (ie, do good and evil exist objectively, and if so, what is good and what is evil?). But the GM has to make this very explicit to his players, because they're not all going to agree. The alignment system is useful only insofar as it defines a priority: the 'good' character is one who says, "I'm going to hold myself up to THIS moral standard, I'm going to act in such a way that I can see myself as good." But this has to be held up against notions of universal morality (has ANY culture ever held up wanton murder as a good thing?), and I think you have to put in a lot of philosophical justification to see wanton murder as a good thing. It could work, though.
I'm not sure if that makes much sense at all.
It's not a question of being good or bad. As McKee says... the most important thing in determining your character is what do they want, and what are they willing to do to get it?
If you can answer that about your character, you'll know how they'll react in any given situation, without resorting to an inherently broken alignment system that doesn't really tell you anything about your character and just leads to the most clicheed characters imaginable.
This much, and the basic point in general, I absolutely agree with. However, I might quibble with some of the details--this isn't disagreement, necessarily, but just getting my own thoughts on the matter clear.
D&D is very bad for modeling a more realistic model of the world than the type of heroic fantasy that assumes that objective good and evil (a) exist and (b) are self-evident. Try to go more realistic and things like alignment restrictions and Detect Evil stop making sense at all, and it's time to either stop using D&D or else house-rule alignment away.
It's true that people don't do things because they are good or evil. But, on the list of selfish priorities people have, "I want to see myself as a good person" and "I want other people to see me as a good person" can be very important. D&D characters, assuming them to be non-anachronistic, probably believe in the existence of good and evil. Lawful/chaotic alignment makes sense, seen on a priority basis: how important to me is working within the social contract to achieve my goals? I don't think that it should be one of the two major axes for character development, though.
Human concepts of good and evil are largely dependent on time and place, but D&D in particular and heroic fantasy in general tend to rely on the objective existence of good and evil, and the objective existence of deities, for their plot points. So I think that GMs can, if they wish, say that good and evil exist for the purposes of the campaign. (This doesn't mean pigeonholing people into good and evil categories; 'good' and 'evil' can be labels for actions and priorities). But they have to be explicit about this, and they have to be explicit about what the characters know about good and evil. In a world where different deities have different conceptions of what priorities are good ones, who or what is going to overrule the deity and say "this is good," "this is bad"? If we have any intuitive knowledge of good and evil at all, it can probably be brought down to the bottom line of empathy and fear of suffering: I don't like suffering, therefore my own suffering is bad. Other people are like me, so they probably don't like suffering either, and therefore their suffering is bad. Assuming that no one has objective knowledge of good and evil, they should at least be able to reason out that much.
Now...my main problem with D&D alignment is that it says that Neutral means either 'eh, I don't really care' or 'balance is in itself a good thing.' It is INSANE to switch sides just because your side is winning. The latter idea about neutrality is just...stupid. And I absolutely reject that "Eh, torture, I could care less either way" is a neutral attitude. It's an evil one, if you take the standpoing that evil exists. It's because D&D assumes otherwise that you get these awful villains who do terrible things just for the fun of it. I would tweak it so that the neutral attitude is "Yeah, torture's kind of bad, but if there's a good enough reason..."
I can't really be content to say that no priorities are any better than other priorities. I want to be able to say that it's bad prioritizing to put more oil, for now, over protecting Arctic wildlife; I want to say that it's bad prioritizing to put national security over not torturing people; I want to say that it's bad prioritizing to value paying $5 for a T-shirt over ensuring that people have fair working conditions. And I want, at the same time, to recognize that not everyone has the same moral system and we really have no sure way of knowing if something is right or not.
This got really long.
I think, if the GM can make up the geography and the politics and the deities, then the GM can make up the metaphysical ethical system of the world (ie, do good and evil exist objectively, and if so, what is good and what is evil?). But the GM has to make this very explicit to his players, because they're not all going to agree. The alignment system is useful only insofar as it defines a priority: the 'good' character is one who says, "I'm going to hold myself up to THIS moral standard, I'm going to act in such a way that I can see myself as good." But this has to be held up against notions of universal morality (has ANY culture ever held up wanton murder as a good thing?), and I think you have to put in a lot of philosophical justification to see wanton murder as a good thing. It could work, though.
I'm not sure if that makes much sense at all.