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I seem to recall that Law vs Chaos alignment was originally less about day-to-day behavior and more what side you would fight on when the Wind Dukes and the Queen of Chaos faced off and picked teams at the end of the world.
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Mar 11, 2017 03:33
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Plutonis posted:No Hoxhaist alignment? Pass. https://twitter.com/Soviet_spaceman/status/839577765229785090
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Mar 11, 2017 03:37
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Also the Megaten games pulled the Law/Chaos alignment well I dunno why TRPGs can't do so.
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Mar 11, 2017 03:40
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Desiden posted:I ran a one shot fantasy game once where I had the dwarves be obsessive lumberjacks instead of miners. The players thought that was cute, until they realized I was actually going whole hog with the historical lumberjack bits, and they stumbled into a bunk of dwarves screaming about the hogan boys and playing a game of 'hot rear end'. They got kind of quiet after that. I'm not sure why. Great, now I have to find a way to run a game where the PCs infiltrate the secret Elven Star Chamber and find two ancient sages drunk on thistle-wine and playing Are You There, Moriarty?
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Mar 11, 2017 03:47
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Plutonis posted:Also the Megaten games pulled the Law/Chaos alignment well I dunno why TRPGs can't do so. Counterpoint: Nocturne and SMT4: Apocalypse ditched it.
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Mar 11, 2017 05:51
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Really, a Megaten approach to alignment where Law and Chaos are both utter garbage but Neutral is just punting would be a nicely bleak game.
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Mar 11, 2017 05:52
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I've recently come around to the idea that alignment is a helpful tool, so long as it references a power centre or something else that's tangible. "Orcs are lawful evil" (or whatever) isn't good because it opens things up to all the discussion above this post, but if Grumsch's WarBand has "Alignment: Grumsch," and Grumsch himself has "Alignment: Pillaging", it becomes a useful barometer for motivations. Mind you, I wouldn't use the above notation for PCs.
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Mar 11, 2017 06:04
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My problem with stuff like that is that it's literally not any different than saying Grumsch has a crew and they like to pillage. It's just a totally unnecessary game term.
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Mar 11, 2017 06:07
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Alignment is more useful as a descriptor of what the character is currently doing, rather than a prescriptor of what the character should do
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Mar 11, 2017 06:07
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Alignment would make more sense as a political baromenter. Alignment: Authoritarian Right Alignment: Libertarian Right Alignment: Authoritarian Left Alignment: Libertarian Left Alignment: Center Right Alignment: Center Left
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Mar 11, 2017 06:10
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long-rear end nips Diane posted:My problem with stuff like that is that it's literally not any different than saying Grumsch has a crew and they like to pillage. It's just a totally unnecessary game term. It's useful organizational shorthand; if you're making your own adventures, it's probably unnecessary, but if you're making something for others, it's a quick way for them to grasp what you're driving at. Plus, I suppose that if you were to make use of a standard set of keywords, you could link it to other game systems fairly easily (e.g. This spell is triggered by X)
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Mar 11, 2017 06:18
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Replace the 9-point alignment system with this, it would be about as useful:
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Mar 11, 2017 06:18
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Alignment is a mechanic for defining army factions in a wargame and the fact it somehow continues to persist in D&D nearly forty years later speaks to a deep intellectual rot within the hobby.
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Mar 11, 2017 06:52
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Asimo posted:Alignment is a mechanic for defining army factions in a wargame and the fact it somehow continues to persist in D&D nearly forty years later speaks to a deep intellectual rot within the hobby. Well to be fair it's also fairly important to one of the major fictional influences on D&D, and crops up in a couple of the other Appendix N works as well off the top of my head
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Mar 11, 2017 08:48
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Serf posted:Replace the 9-point alignment system with this, it would be about as useful: So much for the tolerant Chaotic Good
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Mar 11, 2017 09:13
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long-rear end nips Diane posted:My problem with stuff like that is that it's literally not any different than saying Grumsch has a crew and they like to pillage. It's just a totally unnecessary game term. It's only unnecessary if you don't actually tie it into the game in any sense. If there are mechanical levers that can influence and be influenced by affiliations, allegiances, and (to shamelessly steal terminology from Exalted) intimacies then it might actually be useful to note that Grumsch's War-Band is explicitly aligned with Grumsch and not, for example, something more ideological that runs deeper than that.
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Mar 11, 2017 10:45
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Just had an idea for a notion of a stock fantasy world where you could make the fact elves / dwarves / whatever are different "races" actually a misconception rather than reality, though. http://www.imdb.com/video/demo_reel/vi1985984281
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Mar 11, 2017 11:42
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Serf posted:Replace the 9-point alignment system with this, it would be about as useful: Covok posted:Alignment would make more sense as a political baromenter. tfw the jerks who brag about having you on ignore steal your posts
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Mar 11, 2017 13:33
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Serf posted:Replace the 9-point alignment system with this, it would be about as useful: what the gently caress is this bullshit
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Mar 11, 2017 14:30
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Cease to Hope posted:what the gently caress is this bullshit A political compass by, as far as I can tell, 4chan. Which means they hate social justice warriors and Jews, but also everyone else, so it's generally offensive and specifically anti-Semitic.
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Mar 11, 2017 16:15
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Cease to Hope posted:what the gently caress is this bullshit some dumb bullshit i saw on facebook and imgur
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Mar 11, 2017 16:25
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LatwPIAT posted:generally offensive and specifically anti-Semitic 4chan in a nutshell.
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Mar 11, 2017 16:29
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Serf posted:Replace the 9-point alignment system with this, it would be about as useful:
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Mar 11, 2017 16:34
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Yawgmoth posted:Alignment: Jews Ah, a Central Banker
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Mar 11, 2017 16:39
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Yawgmoth posted:Alignment: Jews I'm a fan of "Greedy but productive capitalists" which actually maps pretty easily onto neutral evil
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Mar 11, 2017 16:55
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Serf posted:I'm a fan of "Greedy but productive capitalists" Ah yes, neutral evil, the purest form.
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Mar 11, 2017 16:55
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I want to join a regular D&D game done online with roll20 or something like that but I don't know how to play D&D. I have played some Through the Breach (like, 2 sessions) and that's about it. Before I try to join a game and have everyone hate me for my ignorance of rules etc., is there a good primer online that I could read to understand the game a little more? (I am guessing 4e or 5e, whatever is closer to TTB?). I didn't know where to post this.
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Mar 11, 2017 17:05
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Other than Last Stand are there any other games that actually do human scale versus giant scale combat well?
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Mar 11, 2017 17:27
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Serf posted:Replace the 9-point alignment system with this, it would be about as useful: You posted the wrong image  Siivola posted:They've also released similar supplements for Innistrad and Zendikar. Part of the challenge with an intense effort to convert a Magic world to D&D rules would be having to pull setting lore masters and rules people to (what WotC and Hasbro both see as) little more than a glorified IP mine they've been squatting on. If they actually published a full campaign setting book for Ravnica or one of the other super popular settings, it'd sell very well... for a ttrpg book. Which is nothing compared to either another card block or even one of the tie-in novels. It would be good for D&D and nothing else, basically.
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Mar 11, 2017 17:28
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They haven't done Magic tie-in novels for years now (because they didn't sell, natch), but basically yes.
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Mar 11, 2017 17:36
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Mar 11, 2017 17:38
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well if we're doing this
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Mar 11, 2017 17:43
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gradenko_2000 posted:Alignment is more useful as a descriptor of what the character is currently doing, rather than a prescriptor of what the character should do I haven't even found it useful for that much. The arguments surrounding what is good or evil or lawful or chaotic are a subjective crapshoot because at least in the latest D&D core there is no coherent underpinning or framework for why X is a particular alignment but Y isn't. Case in point: necromancy. Core 5E describes it as intrinsically evil magic that only evil people use regularly. Why though? What about animating a corpse into a non-sentient weapon/source of labor in a setting where that person's soul/selfhood is objectively out of the picture upon dying is evil, especially when you hold it up against spells that let you force someone to do anything short of directly physically harming themselves against their will? At best it belies, I think, some really sloppy thinking from the designers about good/evil. If you're going to make it such an important concept it should have more thought than that. Necromancy has kind of been my bugaboo lately and the more I play 5th edition the more it annoys me because of the absolutely reprehensible poo poo I can technically pull with various Enchantment spells while never straying from Chaotic Good, but god forbid I make one zombie out of something that's already dead to carry my poo poo for me.
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Mar 11, 2017 18:20
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Necromancy is evil in most DnD settings cause even non sentient undead are animated by the force of entropy and anti-life, and are inherently malicious.
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Mar 11, 2017 18:26
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Entropy is literally a synonym for chaos, not evil. "Inherently malicious" is also a weird thing to say about a dude that will just stand around twiddling his fingers until I tell him to do something and which also applies to, say, wild cats. (Really I'd argue that mindless undead intrinsically lack the capacity for malice, being, you know, mindless. But hey.) Reene fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Mar 11, 2017 |
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Mar 11, 2017 18:34
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It's because modern D&D presumes undead are animated by negative energy, which is bad. I guess maybe because giving something life through the essential force of destruction is wrong on some level? I don't get why it'd work at all though. Positive energy is the energy of restoring life and healing, so you'd think it'd be way easier to animate corpses with it. Eberron even had the deathless creature type for the Undying Court, which were basically undead fueled by positive energy.
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Mar 11, 2017 18:36
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I think if you're looking for ethical nuance, baseline D&D just isn't where you're doing to find it.
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Mar 11, 2017 18:41
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Brother Entropy posted:well if we're doing this 
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Mar 11, 2017 18:42
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I think if you're looking for ethical nuance, baseline D&D just isn't where you're doing to find it. I mean yeah all arguments inevitably circle back around to D&D Is Bad It's just another highlight of how bad the drat alignment system is for me.
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Mar 11, 2017 18:43
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Necromancy and undead are innately evil in 5th edition because they were in 3.5, the only edition of D&D that the designers of 5th edition ever played. Necromancy and unintelligent undead were neutral in all other editions of D&D. Even 3.0 had them as neutral.
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Mar 11, 2017 19:03
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