As a DM, I don't give alignment a lot of weight, but I do give it a little;
my house rules:
- a good aligned character cannot an evil god as his chosen deity or vice versa - if you stray too far from your alignment through your actions, don't expect your prayers to be heard next time you worship at your god's church, or possibly expect a stern lecture or worse. - in extreme cases, and only after lots of warning, I might even go so far as to have a devout character's powers fail from time to time. If the character agreed to act more in accordance with his deity's philosophy, those issues would go away. Additionally, the character could simply decide to worship a more appropriate deity
A bit of a tangent, since I just had a similar discussion with one of my DMs: You can't do that.
By RAW, I'm told, a divine caster (we were talking about my cleric in particular) is invested with a measure of divine energy through ordination. The simple analogy is that you're given a battery of cleric power and expected to do good deeds with it.
If you lose favor or contact with your God? Or you travel to a plane where they have no influence? You still keep your powers, because the power's been plugged into you directly. DMs can't just go "Nope, spell fizzles because you're not praying or donating enough," or whatever fiat he feels like punishing the player with.
Now, said god might come to smite you like a punk... But they can't cut you off from your powers anymore on a whim.
As a DM, I find it easier to just punish the players no matter what they pick, as I assume they will pick stuff that is broken. I mean, fight after fight they kill all the monsters without getting killed themselves! What sort of a game is this, anyway?
The answer i want the party to take is, well, any of the ones i listed....except maybe the first one, which would then probably have to be removed as a viable choice....technically options 2 thru 4 ALL move the story forward in new and interesting ways, and in several cases, they move the story forward in more ways than one.
Agreed. All are technically viable options because no options are really "off the table" for players. That's the joy of infinite play.
Fight the dragon might give the heroes TWO reputations, depending on what people WANT to think of them....they're either the heroic dragonslayers to the people they meet, or the selfish heroes whose hubris lead to the decimation of half a village.
Might depend on whether the paper is edited by J. Jonah Jameson, but you're definitely right.
Make the deal - ooh boy! sure they are saving a lot of lives....but just watch the heroes try to sell THAT deal to the mayor of the town (i just realized the situation didn't say, but i assumed the dragon met them in the town, and the dialogue might be going on in front of several terrified townsfolk (certainly hightens the drama AND the stakes!))
Woo! High stakes AND drama! That is meat & drink to a hero!
Double-cross the dragon by stalling, evacuation, or like your situation posted right under this. That is the solution i would probably bet on my group doing....they like to try to be clever. This option either leads to "ultimate heroism" by being 100% successful, or it leads to partial success (the dragon discovers the scheme, but the heroes still take him down with LESS collateral damage), or it leads to ultimate failure (for the scenario, i mean....if it becomes a skill challenge, which it may very well do, then total failure would probably cause more devastation than any of the other options alone.)
My players would definitely want to play the entire month in-game so they could try to set-up as much as possible to make sure the dragon ends up good & dead. They'd meet that challenge head on.
FANTASTIC choice, but in reality, the one with the HIGHEST stakes. As stated above, it could work perfectly.....say a complexity 3 skill challenge....8 successes before 3 failures, to abstract the fight (or ANY other combination of skills, battles, role-playing, etc. that would be acceptable to the players plotting this). Success means you succeed, and the dragon is caught completely off guard....the party gets an easy fight, or no fight (and "describe how you TOTALLY trick the dragon" would be lots of fun for my group), and a bunch of quest xp and a GREAT reputation. failure with 5 or more successes means partial failure.....some devastation, probably less than a full on fight. Complete failure should FEEL like failure....something like the dragon flying right past the heroes, torching the town, and leaving (or flying right back to its lair...smugly).
I can see how you'd say "thats the obvious choice"
High stakes are what heroes trade in ^_~. To be fair, you're definitely right. It's super risky but sometimes thats what happens. I wouldn't abstract it tho, personally (not saying doing so is wrong, mind you) because, as I said, my players would want to get down to the nitty gritty of actually seeing what they can do to kill this dragon but-good.
"Obvious choice" might not have been the best choice of words...but for a Lawful Good character it is about the first that springs to mind. Other alignments would have different "obvious" choices in my opinion.
the point is, "the obvious choice" would likely be obviously different for everyone. Some would pick the deal, some would slay the dragon, perhaps reasoning allowing evil to continue for even a month would be the greatest evil. I'm just trying to point out my issue with your assertation that "good and evil are not subjective in high fantasy." It feels like its denying a core concept of high fantasy....that concept being that pervasive evil tends to be strong...Strong enough to oppose the heroes and cause collateral damage to boot....collateral damage that the PCs can only mitigate, not negate completely.
Stopping evil can have a cost. I have no issue with that. Nor does high fantasy have a problem with that. Just look at comics...you have battles that devastate entire cities but the good guys win and the bad guys are defeated. That is fantasy, right there. Its only when you start dissecting that ("The heroes don't REALLY care! My house got destroyed!") that you are ripping the clothes off the emperor and claiming he's always been naked. Especially since even the most fervant player is gonna get real-tired real-quick of people dogging them for stuff like that. I mean, who'd want to be a brave hero in that sorta situation? "Oh yeah you destroyed the lich but what have you done for the economy?!" "Hey, Batman...why don't you stop worrying about the Joker and take on the REAL crooks in Washington!"...it's just insipid.
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I've just read this entire thread (not as long as some, but still lengthy enough for an "at work" read) and I'll say that there are many good point being made.
So, I'll throw in my 3.5 cents...
A bit of my background: I started playing in 1981 with the blue box basic set. I moved to AD&D "1e" which then became 2e (though it was, at the core, the same game to us). I had a few year hiatus where I didn't play (due to a lack of a group) from about 1990-1995 then I came back into the game with great enthusiasm to a very serious 2e campaign. I embraced 3e and 3.5 with all of my love for streamlined mathematics (higher numbers always meant better). And when I first read the 4e rules, I decided that I had found the perfect system for me.
That being said, I have yet to play a long-term campaign (i.e. not a "one-shot" adventure) where an argument over alignment did not happen. The arguments aren't always heated or disruptive, but they all carry one common event. It happens when one player (or DM) says to another "Your character is {insert alignment here} he/she wouldn't do that." From there, the discussion of subjective/objective alignments, intentions vs. actions, and a whole slew of other justifications for the statement and the action which triggered the statement are passed around the table.
I used to avoid as much as possible by playing "true neutral" characters that either had a mindset of indifference towards the moral and ethical issues in the world or always chose to "weigh the options" before deciding what was the best course of action.
But this didn't address the issue because the other players would still argue amongst themselves about alignments.
When I would run the game, almost invariably I had players argue with me about the efficacy of the detect "whatever alignment" spells. I typically stood with the idea that the game listed the alignment of a given creature and so the success or failure of the spell was based solely upon that and not upon the player's interpretation of the intentions OR actions of the enemy.
But even then, I'd have players commenting on the actions of other players with the "your alignment wouldn't allow that" comments.
As a side note, one of my favourite conversations went something like this:
P1: Why are you doing that? That's a very lawful action. P2: So? I'm a chaotic neutral character. I can do pretty much whatever I want whenever I want. P1: But that's clearly doing what the lawful character is telling you to do. You're not lawful. P2: My character is Chaotic NEUTRAL, not Chaotic STUPID!
The main problem that I saw was that the players were the ones with issues, not really the system. However, I never did find a way to "fix" the players.
When 4E was released with the massively "scaled back" alignment system, I thought it was pretty awesome. I looked forward to a removal of "alignment discussion" from my gaming table. It was not so. People still had those discussions.
My solution was to remove the alignment system entirely from my campaigns. I've found that in the games that I run, there is no need for it in any way. It plays no significant role in game mechanics (in 4E) and so I simply removed it. I told the players that their characters will behave however they intend them to behave. And some may say they are "good" and some may say they are "evil" and some may say other things. But ultimately, their actions are up to the player. Then I warn them that the NPCs around them will respond to them based upon that NPC's perceptions of the character.
So far, it has worked quite well. And I, for one, am happy to have the "why would your good character kill that prisoner?" questions removed from the table.
As a DM, I don't give alignment a lot of weight, but I do give it a little;
my house rules:
- a good aligned character cannot an evil god as his chosen deity or vice versa - if you stray too far from your alignment through your actions, don't expect your prayers to be heard next time you worship at your god's church, or possibly expect a stern lecture or worse. - in extreme cases, and only after lots of warning, I might even go so far as to have a devout character's powers fail from time to time. If the character agreed to act more in accordance with his deity's philosophy, those issues would go away. Additionally, the character could simply decide to worship a more appropriate deity
A bit of a tangent, since I just had a similar discussion with one of my DMs: You can't do that.
By RAW, I'm told, a divine caster (we were talking about my cleric in particular) is invested with a measure of divine energy through ordination. The simple analogy is that you're given a battery of cleric power and expected to do good deeds with it.
That has only been true in 4e. In older editions, if you lost favor with your god, if your alignment changed to one prohibited by your god, or if you're a paladin and you stop being lawful good or broke the paladin's code of conduct, you completely and permanently lost all of your divine powers.
You could try to get them back. I don't know how older editions handled it, but in 3.x, if you wanted to get your powers back, you were obligated to find a 9th level or higher NPC druid or cleric to cast the Atonement spell on you.
Thinking about creating a race for 4e? Make things a lil' easier on yourself by reading my Race Mechanic Creation Guide first.
Action v. intent is one of the biggest reasons why alignment is a problem, imo.
in 3e, the rules are pretty clear that while intent is considered, actions come first. For example, if you decided to put your sword through a small child's skull to save an entire civilization, the secondary outcome/consequence of saving the civilization doesn't matter. You butchered a defenseless bystander to get what you were after, which is an extreme evil act. While the intent does weigh in in the alignment system, it only weighs in insofar as how it directly influences your actions. In otherwords, if your intentions do not match your actions , action rules.
A lawful good paladin who subscribes to a more utilitarian framework for her/his morals wouldn't see an issue with depriving someone of their property if it served a greater good.
Whether or not they see an issue with it doesn't matter. They would have stepped from their lofty station. Unless by depriving that person o ftheir property, you mean doing something like knocking the weapon out of someone's hand who is threatening someone else with pain and death, or something.
Likewise, utilitarian arguments could be made for slavery or any number of things that appear to be morally bereft. A character who subscribes to Kant's categorical imperative on the other hand would have moral issues doing any number of things that one could argue are necessary or just given the specific circumstances.
I see someone's taken a Humanities 104 class. Well you know what? Nietszche said that Mill was "vulgar and a blockhead" and Kant was a "crazy extremist." I have major problems with both deontology and utilitarianism, because following obligation can cause all kinds of people to do ridiculous and distasteful things, even with the safeguard that is the second formulation of Kant's categorical imperative, that of safeguarding all life. I don't like Mill because his ideas have the underlying assumption that "there must be a right way for all to behave." Yes, Mill was actually an absolutist, but his statement didn't just extend to morals.
It extended to everything, and it was this specific statement that moved Nietszche to call him "vulgar." People should eat the same foods. Wear the same clothes. Think the same thoughts. Make the same amount of money. This gets into utliitarianism's even more evil twin, egalitarianism, which states that regardless of how this is achieved, all must be made equal. Well the problem is that not everyone is equal, and that is okay. People are unique, they have their own likes, dislikes, hopes, fears, and dreams. The very idea that people are ultimately interchangeable, which is what the core of utilitarianism suggests, is utterly disgusting. People are not interchangeable. I am not replaceable. My brother is not replaceable. You are not replaceable. If someone walked up to me and told me a member of my family was replaceable, well, that person would need a replaceament let's just say that. So what about Kant? Fulfill your duty, no matter what it is. If your duty is to make yourself miseable for the rest of your life, or if your duty makes you miserable, or makes a whole lot of people miserable, it doesn't matter. Do your duty. See? Crazy freakin extremist Kant.
While most people into philosophy don't consider themselves utilitarians -- myself included -- utilitirian bias is pretty ubiquitous.
Yep, second only to prescriptive moral relativism, which is probably the most insane idea I have ever heard of. Descriptive moral relativism, I can totally understand, it's an inarguable fact. But prescriptive relativism is just plain bonkers and logically fallacious.
The issue that I'm trying to get at here, is that players come with their pre-conceived notions of good and evil. Even if evil is a palpable and real thing in the fantasy universe, the notions of what is good and evil will be informed by the players' beliefs as to what good and evil is.
That shouldn't be an issue since the PHB clearly defines alignment evil and alignment good though.
Wow, format broke and I can't figure out how to fix it. You can probably guess which ones my responses are though. Hopefully.
Also, a note about moral ambiguity and heroic fantasy.
Moral ambiguity plays a strong role in your fiction. In fact, ambiguities of all sorts are threaded throughout your work, which is a far cry from the black-and-white approach of most fantasy. Was that a deliberate choice of yours?
There is no moral ambiguity in my work.
Did everybody hear that? Let me say it again, louder: THERE IS NO MORAL AMBIGUITY IN MY WORK.
It only looks ambiguous if you insist on framing a story's conflict in terms of Good vs. Evil. It's not that simple. Real life does not operate in those terms. Neither does my fiction.
I know it's sometimes hard for people to get their minds around, but the whole concept of the Good/Evil duality was, essentially, invented circa 600 BCE in Persia. You'll discover that evil qua Evil does not even appear in the Old Testament of the Bible until the Prophets -- the books that were written after the Persian Captivity. It doesn't appear in the Illiad, or the Odyssey, or any work by Sophocles, Euripides, or Aeschylus.
People who try to tell you that life is about the struggle between Good and Evil are either 1) fooling themselves, 2) lying to you, or 3) both. As Caine himself put it, "When somebody starts talking about good and evil, better keep one hand on your wallet."
The black-and-white approach of most fantasy is bullshit. It's laziness. By positing a Force of Supernatural Evil, the writer is relieved of the necessity of motivating his antagonists. "The Devil made me do it!" Or his protagonists, for that matter. "Of course they must be destroyed! They're EEEEEvil!"
Yeesh. I don't think I'm the only one who's sick to death of that crap.
The bolded, underlined, and italicized part was modified by me, but other than that it appears as written in the interview, "A conversation with Matthew Woodring Stover," which can be found on, "The SF Site." Moral ambiguity only happens when you try and apply good and evil to real life, think about that. Because in reality, no one takes their shoulds and their oughts from good and evil, or rather, they don't attach intrinsic good to the concept of good. People will call an act good for a variety of reasons, but they always say it is good, for a reason other than simply, it is good. When they say why it is good, it shows that they think the why is good, which is what they place value on.
So it really is a case of where people place their value. This is what's known as a value judgment, and they are a natural part of being human, and they are also why real peace on earth is a total impossiblity. See, the heroic fantasy model is actually closer to real life than a lot of stories that try to be true to real life, because real life has no ambiguities, only value judgments, and believe me, there are value judgments made all the time in heroic fantasy. Some people think evil is the best way to be, while others think good is the best way to be, for example.
As a DM, I don't give alignment a lot of weight, but I do give it a little;
my house rules:
- a good aligned character cannot an evil god as his chosen deity or vice versa - if you stray too far from your alignment through your actions, don't expect your prayers to be heard next time you worship at your god's church, or possibly expect a stern lecture or worse. - in extreme cases, and only after lots of warning, I might even go so far as to have a devout character's powers fail from time to time. If the character agreed to act more in accordance with his deity's philosophy, those issues would go away. Additionally, the character could simply decide to worship a more appropriate deity
A bit of a tangent, since I just had a similar discussion with one of my DMs: You can't do that.
By RAW, I'm told, a divine caster (we were talking about my cleric in particular) is invested with a measure of divine energy through ordination. The simple analogy is that you're given a battery of cleric power and expected to do good deeds with it.
That has only been true in 4e. In older editions, if you lost favor with your god, if your alignment changed to one prohibited by your god, or if you're a paladin and you stop being lawful good or broke the paladin's code of conduct, you completely and permanently lost all of your divine powers.
You could try to get them back. I don't know how older editions handled it, but in 3.x, if you wanted to get your powers back, you were obligated to find a 9th level or higher NPC druid or cleric to cast the Atonement spell on you.
First, I'd argue that you can use any house-rules you want, as long as your players are on board with it.
Second, I give lots of warning to the player. The player can act in accordance with the deity that he chose, he can switch to another god that more closely relates to how the player is acting, or he can start to lose some of those powers. A player would pretty much have to intentionally self-sabotage for it to happen. If my player tells me his character worships Gruumsh and then goes around slaughtering orcs by the dozen, it's going to start to negatively affect his character. For sure.
Third, as you said, you're given power and expected to do good deeds with it (assuming this is a good-aligned god). If you then go and use that power for evil, your god or one of his chosen is going to have something to say about it.
I feel this is entirely in control of the player, and therefore both fair and in the spirit of D&D logic. pun intended
As a DM, I don't give alignment a lot of weight, but I do give it a little;
my house rules:
- a good aligned character cannot an evil god as his chosen deity or vice versa - if you stray too far from your alignment through your actions, don't expect your prayers to be heard next time you worship at your god's church, or possibly expect a stern lecture or worse. - in extreme cases, and only after lots of warning, I might even go so far as to have a devout character's powers fail from time to time. If the character agreed to act more in accordance with his deity's philosophy, those issues would go away. Additionally, the character could simply decide to worship a more appropriate deity
I'm a 3e player, so I'm guessing these are all 4e houserules? Because in 3e this is all baked in in some fashion or another. You can only be a cleric of a deity who's alignment is one step away from your own, and opposite aligned followers would begin to shift as per the alignment rules, as offering to a good-aligned good is a good act, and so on and so forth. Breaking away from your deity's philosophy or straying to far in alignment means you lose all supernatural-based class features until someone casts atonement on you, which they will generally only do after you perform some service as penance. This kind of stuff isn't baked in in 4e?
First, I'd argue that you can use any house-rules you want, as long as your players are on board with it.
Second, I give lots of warning to the player. The player can act in accordance with the deity that he chose, he can switch to another god that more closely relates to how the player is acting, or he can start to lose some of those powers. A player would pretty much have to intentionally self-sabotage for it to happen. If my player tells me his character worships Gruumsh and then goes around slaughtering orcs by the dozen, it's going to start to negatively affect his character. For sure.
Third, as you said, you're given power and expected to do good deeds with it (assuming this is a good-aligned god). If you then go and use that power for evil, your god or one of his chosen is going to have something to say about it.
I feel this is entirely in control of the player, and therefore both fair and in the spirit of D&D logic. pun intended
Yeah, but any time you're making a house rule, follow the advice in the DMG about it and ask two questions first; why am I changing/making this rule, and what else will this affect?" The thing about an abundance of house rules, is that if you have too many, it can be easy to get away from actual D&D and into something completely different. The main thing to consider is how far away from D&D you are willing to get before you are happy with the system.
I almost never warn the player of anything. I don't even like reminding them what alignment their actions are whenever they are about to take an action contrary to their alignment. I make sure the player knows well all relavent systems before hand, so any decisions they make, they make knowing full well what they are doing. It is always entirely in control of the player. The player gets to decide what their character values, and the player gets to decide how their character acts. Alignment and the ability to decide what it is has never, as far as I know, not been in the hands of the players, at least according to 3e RAW.
Ugh, yeah, I used to hate that. You do something and it's like, Wait, what's your alignment again? It's None of Your Damn Business, that's what. LOL
Seriously. "It's whatever you need it to be for me to be able to play my character the way that makes sense to me. Can we move on?" ... is what I wish I'd said.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
Ugh, yeah, I used to hate that. You do something and it's like, Wait, what's your alignment again? It's None of Your Damn Business, that's what. LOL
Seriously. "It's whatever you need it to be for me to be able to play my character the way that makes sense to me. Can we move on?" ... is what I wish I'd said.
My favorite is, "well, right now its X, let me get back to you in a week." DMs really shouldn't be asking that question, unless they genuinely forgot and just need an update for their records or something.
