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5 months ago ::
Jan 21, 2013 - 7:46PM
#231
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Alignment restrictions are also part of the D&D brand.s.
Which is not a good thing. Being renowned for something ludicrous is not a positive.
This.
It is noted than anyone with a passing knowledge of TTRPGs is clued into the Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil and how both have L/C Stupid variants, and the consterenation this causes. D&D is widely mocked by the rest of the gaming community for the 9 points alignment system, and there is no part of the gaming community that praises it (or even uses anything remotely similar to it) except D&D grognards.
"But it's tradition!" does not overrule "but it's ridiculous!"
Being mocked by a 40 year old living in his parents basement pretending to be a female elf does not really have the stigma you may expect.
Pro DnD Member of the Axis of Awesome Fighters: Using socks to kill monsters since 2012 DnD Next: Now with more then 4 minutes of Roleplay per gaming hour Spoiler:
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"If you can't make an interesting human fighter, then you aren't ready to play anything else yet" Edymnion
"The idea of resting up between encounters to fill-up on hit points and spells struck my meta-gaming nine-year-old as a distinct possibility. "Are you mad?" says my seven-year-old "This place is full of monsters!" "jamesgrahamuk
All characters have a story. Spoiler:
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Sometimes that story is short and sometimes it is long. They can be tragic, comic or absurd. Some teach. Some are just to fill the empty spaces in our lives. Rarely it is a transcendent fugue only half remembered but wondered at. And frequently: "it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." -William Shakespeare
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5 months ago ::
Jan 21, 2013 - 8:08PM
#232
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I mean, why do you play D&D? To hang out with your buds, to kill some beasties, and to take part in amazing stories, right?
... When I pull out the D&D books, I play D&D, and that means cosmology, history, and all that good stuff.
I play D&D to homebrew worlds. In other words, to precisely ignore the official cosmology.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 21, 2013 - 8:10PM
#233
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Date Joined:
Aug 15, 2011
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Why so mad?
"You must play it Gary's way!" has been a running theme for quite some time in the DDN boards, usually coupled with a failure to understand "you can still play it Gary's way when everyone else is allowed to play their own ways."
Well said. Very well said.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 21, 2013 - 8:12PM
#234
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Date Joined:
Aug 15, 2011
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I mean, why do you play D&D? To hang out with your buds, to kill some beasties, and to take part in amazing stories, right?
... When I pull out the D&D books, I play D&D, and that means cosmology, history, and all that good stuff.
I play D&D to homebrew worlds. In other words, to precisely ignore the official cosmology.
Every D&D game I've run since 3e came out has been either a homebrewed world, or Eberron. The 'official' history and cosmology do not matter to me much at all.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 21, 2013 - 8:30PM
#235
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Date Joined:
May 25, 2012
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Some people seem to have not read - or not understood - the OP. The point is that alignment has become an inextricable part of D&D culture, particularly in the eyes of the world at large. That's correct, and WotC, in their apparent push to revisit the tropes which most mean "D&D-ness" in the public eye, is likely going to use the 9-alignment grid as the default system. Anyone can certainly homebrew it out, but there's little chance that the militant cries of done people to eliminate it from the game will be heeded.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 21, 2013 - 8:33PM
#236
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Date Joined:
Aug 15, 2011
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Some people seem to have not read - or not understood - the OP. The point is that alignment has become an inextricable part of D&D culture,
If it was inextricable, so many people would not extract it.
What you do not understand is that it is easier to make the game without alignment, then have a module to introduce it, than it is to make it part of the foundation and then force people to remove it.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 21, 2013 - 8:34PM
#237
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Date Joined:
May 18, 2002
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Some people seem to have not read - or not understood - the OP. The point is that alignment has become an inextricable part of D&D culture, particularly in the eyes of the world at large.
Removing mandatory class alignments and the associated screwjobs is not going to instantly cause the Batman Alignment Chart to disappear overnight.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 21, 2013 - 9:33PM
#238
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Anyone can certainly homebrew it out, but there's little chance that the militant cries of done people to eliminate it from the game will be heeded.
Most people that I have seen decrying alignment don't care if it remains in the game, so long as the mechanical interaction with it is not assumed.
The OP is right however that alignment won't just go away, even if it were stripped out. Plenty of people have learned to play in editions that had the mechanical integration of the nine alignments. They'll probably still use those terms when talking about it just like people carrying forward the slang they learned while growing up.
Why Mechanics-Alignment Integration is Bad
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so why even play a fighter if you can play the paladin the exact same way behaviorally and get added power to boot. "Paladin" is about accepting better game-enhancing mechanics at the price of more rigid in game behavior.
Really? So it goes something like this?
Fighter: "I want to be a paladin."
NPC: "Really?"
Fighter: "Yes."
NPC: "Very well." Starts reading from a holy book while still in-character "Do you accept having to choose and stick to the lawful good alignment, eventhough neither of us actually knows that it exists or what it is?"
Fighter: "I do."
NPC: "Do you reject good game balance because you accidentally rolled a high Charisma?"
Fighter: "What?"
NPC: "I don't know what it means either."
Fighter: "Oh. Umm, ok I do."
NPC: "In the name of all that is metagamey and broken, accept these better game enhancing mechanics."
Fighter: "These what?"
NPC: "Just get out there and try to fulfill a million different people's notion of good while not violating and part of any of them."
So the system is designed such that every single hit needs to be described to avoid confusion? Here's a scenario. The players are nudists, everybody in the world are nudists, it's not weird, it's totally normal in this land. They are naked and they fight drakes taking damage throughout, but healing up with surges. Later they meet the guy who raised the drakes.
Part 1: I didn't describe any of the hits. What does he see?
Part 2: Lets say I described the drakes as biting the players, yet they healed up. What does he see?
D20 Modern Toon PC Race.
Mecha Pilot's Skill Challenge Emporium.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 21, 2013 - 10:01PM
#239
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Date Joined:
Mar 22, 2008
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Some people seem to have not read - or not understood - the OP. The point is that alignment has become an inextricable part of D&D culture, particularly in the eyes of the world at large. That's correct, and WotC, in their apparent push to revisit the tropes which most mean "D&D-ness" in the public eye, is likely going to use the 9-alignment grid as the default system. Anyone can certainly homebrew it out, but there's little chance that the militant cries of done people to eliminate it from the game will be heeded.
We don't have to homebrew it out. It's an optional module that we will have to intentionally put in.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 21, 2013 - 10:21PM
#240
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Date Joined:
Aug 16, 2012
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Why so mad?
"You must play it Gary's way!" has been a running theme for quite some time in the DDN boards, usually coupled with a failure to understand "you can still play it Gary's way when everyone else is allowed to play their own ways."
Or rather, inclusiveness is better than exclusivity, especially for a brand on the verge of being mothballed for a decade or two.
Er, I'm not particularily fond of "Gary's way", friend. In fact, I think that many of the original core assumptions that have been with D&D since the get-go are, quite simply, bad. Like, for instance, spell casting Rangers. The Ranger class as presented essentially equates to the Greyhawk specific Rangers of the Gnarley Forest; a brotherhood with certain ties and resources that explain just how these woodsmen were trained up in the way they were. Mind you, if you were just looking at the core books, you were left scratching your head and wondering why exactly the class had spell casting abilities.
I'm all for inclusiveness, so... I'm really confused as to why you're, uh... pissy?
Anyway, alignment is in, but it's a module. Everyone can be happy, provided the mechanics don't end up being terribad in the final draft.
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