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RandallODim posted:CG/LG is Locke/Hobbes Having read Hobbes, I can tell you for a fact that he is neither good nor Good.
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Apr 10, 2018 21:26
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Roland Jones posted:It really doesn't though. It has moments of both Durkon and Roy objecting to doing reasonable things because of the laws of the country they're in, once in a place that was extremely evil and where they were on a timeline to save the world, and every now and then the Chaotic characters seem to become braindead for alignment reasons. Plus that awful Celia-Roy conversation. OotS does a lot well, but alignment is not one of them, even if it does it better than most D&D stuff; that's not a high bar to clear. I disagree, and i guess that's ok! I really hope rich is ok.
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Apr 10, 2018 21:28
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I don't think alignment is particularly useful, but I also don't think it's hard to pin down Lawful and Chaotic as axes. Lawful characters believe in hierarchy, tradition, and codes of law. Chaotic characters don't think those things have intrinsic value. That doesn't mean a lawful character Loves All Laws or that they can't think a foreign culture has inferior laws or whatever. It just means that they believe in good lawmaking and structured societies as one of their core principles. They might want to change the structure of those societies, but not in a way that compromises their core beliefs about the central importance of law to a functioning society.
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Apr 10, 2018 22:14
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The reason it's not particularly useful, though, is that this has little to no thematic relevance to your average game of Dungeons & Dragons, to the point where it might as well be, "Good-Evil, Raise Taxes-Lower Taxes", or "Good-Evil, Rehabilitation-Retribution". The Law-Chaos axis is asking what are basically sociopolitical questions in a game about adventurers who run around in caves.
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Apr 10, 2018 22:21
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That second one would actually be an interesting lens to see alignment through. Anyways, I disagree, and think Lawful/Chaotic should be the only alignment. Go back to Basics.
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Apr 10, 2018 22:24
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Replace the nine-point alignment grid with Magic: the Gathering's color pie. Red - Chaotic Green - Neutral White - Lawful "Good" Blue - Lawful Neutral Black - The whole alignment thing is a scam that White set up to impose control over everyone else, so gently caress alignments. (Evil.)
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Apr 10, 2018 22:37
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cargohills posted:Having read Hobbes, I can tell you for a fact that he is neither good nor Good. Hobbes is the reason any internet community can be anywhere approaching tolerable thanks to the possibility of a strict moderation caste, so he's okay in my book.
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Apr 10, 2018 22:40
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ikanreed posted:The idea of alignment itself is lawful good because it's structured formally and makes moral judgements No, the alignment system is chaotic evil because it sows dissent, argument, and ire wherever it goes.
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Apr 10, 2018 23:07
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W.T. Fits posted:Replace the nine-point alignment grid with Magic: the Gathering's color pie. The trick with MtG's colour pie is that it combines psychological / ideological rientra l elements with cosmetic / thematic ones, then uses whichever are more convenient to match with the game mechanics. Like, "we have this character who's a free-thinking rebel against a tyrannical establishment, which is Red as hell, but for balance reasons she needs to be White" "Uh, I guess we can draw her as a knight in shining armour and call it a day?" The D&D equivalent is probably "no, no, this creepy wizened corpse hoarding ancient forbidden magic is totally animated by ~~positive~~ energy, he's cool". NihilCredo fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Apr 10, 2018 |
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Apr 10, 2018 23:26
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W.T. Fits posted:Replace the nine-point alignment grid with Magic: the Gathering's color pie. I'm pretty sure Counterspell is Lawful Evil.
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Apr 10, 2018 23:27
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To be really complete, replace alignment with Ravnica guilds. It's basically the same thing but instead of chaotic evil you have sadomasochist juggalos.
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Apr 10, 2018 23:37
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NihilCredo posted:The trick with MtG's colour pie is that it combines psychological / ideological rientra l elements with cosmetic / thematic ones, then uses whichever are more convenient to match with the game mechanics. The Undying are cool, though 
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Apr 10, 2018 23:49
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MonsterEnvy posted:Slaadi are creatures of chaos. Swimming through the chaotic soup of limbo. I definitely appreciate that there's no outcome where the Slaad reacts appropriately to what the characters are saying.
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Apr 11, 2018 00:37
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Otherkinsey Scale posted:To be really complete, replace alignment with Ravnica guilds. People have talked about alignments of Ravnica guilds before. It kind of works, using roughly the values W.T. Fitts points out.
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Apr 11, 2018 00:53
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I hope Thunt is okay
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Apr 11, 2018 01:05
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ultrafilter posted:I definitely appreciate that there's no outcome where the Slaad reacts appropriately to what the characters are saying. It seems like if you're in the know the only option is to say the opposite of what you mean and hope you get lucky.
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Apr 11, 2018 01:13
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Brony Hunter posted:I hope Thunt is okay Well, he just updated so he must be. On the other hand, having looked at the update in question, I think it's a moot point.
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Apr 11, 2018 01:42
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sebmojo posted:You're posting in the thread of a webcomic which plays alignment with a straight bat and makes it work really well. I don't find that convincing personally. OotS gives lip service to the alignment system here and there but first and foremost writes consistent characters. We've already had effort posts about why Shojo's supposed Chaotic Good status is up for debate, because of the inherent meaningless of the labels of the alignment system. By not dwelling on the label (which is worthless) and instead focusing on consistent characterization that has an arc, OotS does well. The D&D alignment system provides no value. The story could be told just the same, the alignment references stripped, and it would work just as well.
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Apr 11, 2018 02:20
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Invent a new bullshit alignment system for every campaign. In this one, one axis is Dog-Like versus Cat-Like, the other axis is Likes Dogs versus Likes Cats.
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Apr 11, 2018 02:32
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Captain Oblivious posted:I don't find that convincing personally. OotS gives lip service to the alignment system here and there but first and foremost writes consistent characters. We've already had effort posts about why Shojo's supposed Chaotic Good status is up for debate, because of the inherent meaningless of the labels of the alignment system. By not dwelling on the label (which is worthless) and instead focusing on consistent characterization that has an arc, OotS does well. You're begging the question so hard it has a hat and a hardluck story in crayon in front of it. You don't need an alignment system to have good characters, that's not the issue and never has been. But OOTS makes a reasonable case for how it can enrich a story that already has good characters. If it didn't cover the spectrum of meaningful human behaviour it would get in the way, but it (basically) does, so it doesn't. Shojo vs the Paladins is a believable human story that comes directly from their opposed but still basically congruent alignments. Roy's conversation with the recording angel neatly encapsulates key aspects of his character development by way of the alignment system. Belkar's character development can virtually be plotted on a graph. For comparison, consider how Rich manages the issue of Linear Fighters and Quadratic Mages - he's obliged to come up with more and more strained reasons why V can't just solve the problem with a spell, up to including having V fall down holes and knock himself out. The context is that Rich is trying to tell a human story by way of a game system, and alignment isn't one of the aspects of the system that make that hard.
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Apr 11, 2018 02:36
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Bongo Bill posted:Invent a new bullshit alignment system for every campaign. In this one, one axis is Dog-Like versus Cat-Like, the other axis is Likes Dogs versus Likes Cats. Cross-post from a World of Warcraft thread: Light/Shadow Chaos/Order Hunched/Unhunched
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Apr 11, 2018 02:42
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D1Sergo posted:Cross-post from a World of Warcraft thread: Corrupted/ok
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Apr 11, 2018 02:48
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The WoW alignment axes are Tank/DPS/Healer Alliance/Panda/Horde
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Apr 11, 2018 02:53
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Most people only think about alignment when their cars start drifting to the side.
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Apr 11, 2018 03:33
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Phenotype posted:Most people only think about alignment when their cars start drifting to the side. Chaotic crashing into oncoming traffic | Lawful straight | Neutral crashing into the guardrail.
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Apr 11, 2018 03:43
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zodiac is the og alignment chart
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Apr 11, 2018 04:03
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AriadneThread posted:zodiac is the og alignment chart so do I have to be chaotic evil to collect slaves for my after life or
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Apr 11, 2018 05:07
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There goes Thorgorash, burning down another village that made fun of his nose. He is such a Scorpio.
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Apr 11, 2018 06:05
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Silver2195 posted:People have talked about alignments of Ravnica guilds before. It kind of works, using roughly the values W.T. Fitts points out. Boros are cops, so they're def evil of some flavor
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Apr 11, 2018 07:01
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You guys are all Chaotic Evil for making me think there's a new comic I guess that includes me now too
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Apr 11, 2018 09:16
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Trasson posted:No, it just compressed Neutral and Chaotic Good into Good, Neutral and Lawful Evil into Evil, and Foo Neutral into Unaligned because that's what everyone comes down to. Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil aren't "super good and super evil", respectively, and I continually am amused by people who read that into the descriptions. Okay, that makes more sense. I'll admit I haven't read much 4e material, and whatever source I was using didn't make that distinction clear. That's more fair. Trasson posted:Lawful Good and Good aren't different because the former is better. Lawful Good and Good are different because one believes that Good is rooted in a just and orderly society while the other believes that Good comes from underlying moral truths. Lawful Good believes that a fair trial that acquits a murderer because there remains some reasonable doubt as to their guilt is nevertheless Good, even though an Evil act has occurred and an Evil person is free. Good believes that event is Not Actually Good and would advocate (or at least not be opposed to) punishment outside of the existing societal order. This, however, comes off as weird to me. The defining trait of Good isn't that it punishes Evil, and punishing someone acquitted under the law is definitely not a Good act. That's probably more a case of real life vs. D&D morality, though, since D&D is really relaxed about hurting people as long as they've been labeled as bad, so I don't think that's a good road to go down. Trasson posted:As for Unaligned, it's the same as for 3.5's True Neutral: either you're apathetic or you're opposed to adhering too strongly to either side. This can also encompass Lawful and Chaotic Neutral (those variants which don't fall under Good or Evil in actuality). Lawful Neutral is about order above all else, with no preference for Good or for Evil. In that case, you're Unaligned. You support law and society without any real care for whether it helps or hurts people, so long as it keeps functioning. The same goes for Chaotic Neutral: you believe in being free to act as you wish, without fetters. If you believe everyone's free to do so as long as they're not hurting others, you're Good. If you think that the freedoms of others are acceptable losses for an individual's freedom, you're Unaligned or Evil, depending on how you apply that maxim to yourself. That's bogus, though. Lawful Neutral is demonstrably different from Neutral, and you could apply that exact argument to the Lawful Good/Good dichotomy you just mentioned. The same goes for Chaotic Neutral. If it could conditionally be lumped into Good, Evil or Unaligned, maybe that means that none of those are very good at describing a CN character? Trasson posted:It's also worth noting that 4E is explicit that alignment is more than just a descriptor, it's a unifying set of moral principles that you believe in. It's also explicit in that the large majority of people are Unaligned. Good, Evil, Lawful Good, and Chaotic Evil are far more than mere preferences: they're ideologies, and not ones that everyone believes in strongly enough to rate as anything past Unaligned. Well yes, if you define the concept of alignment in 4e's terms, then 4e's system is obviously the best. If we're using the metric that alignment should be about as prescriptive as a zodiac sign or Myers-Briggs personality type, it's not a very good system. I don't think anyone's been saying that all alignments are equally common or valid. Trasson posted:Where are all the Neutral Good characters, and what makes them meaningfully different from the Chaotic Good characters? The same goes for Lawful Neutral and True Neutral (as well as NE/LE and CN/TN). Elan, Haley, Shojo, and Julio are all definitively Good in 4E terms. They hold no special reverence for the rule of law, and may even personally prefer not living under it. Shojo especially is portrayed as utilizing the rule of Law in order to accomplish his own goals (not Lawful), which include the preservation of his people and his society (potentially not Chaotic). In fact, the only word we have for Shojo being Chaotic is Belkar; not precisely a reliable source. Shojo could just as easily be Neutral Good and nothing would be incongruous. The same goes for the other characters mentioned: Elan is Chaotic Good because we've been told he is, not because of some innate distinction from a Neutral Good character. Hell, Nale is Lawful Evil because he's Elan's evil twin: if we were told he was Neutral Evil, we'd be confused not because it doesn't fit his character, but because it's not the polar opposite of Chaotic Good. OotS as a whole takes the Law/Chaos axis seriously and doesn't really deal with neutrals all that much. Vaarsuvius is the only Neutral main character, and the only major characters I can think of are Gannji, Enor, and Therkla (who was True Neutral, if you want to make the distinction). If your position is that the vast majority of characters should fall in the Unaligned camp, who else would you put in there? The series doesn't really have any Neutral Good characters, but that's more of a case against NG as an alignment than CG. You might as well say that Lawful Good is a meaningless alignment since you can't find any meaningful examples of characters in the space between them and Chaotic Good. And Shojo is very definitely Chaotic. Belkar's entire redemption arc started with him finding common ground with a Good character, because both of them shared the Chaotic part of their alignment, and the only reason the arc is believable is because the end goal is that Belkar might one day be just Chaotic Neutral. Shojo and Belkar's relationship only works in a system that treats Lawful and Chaotic as something that can be wholly separated from Good and Evil. Lawful Neutral is not really an alignment that shows up in OotS (let's not go down the Miko road), but there's plenty of character archetypes that embody it in other media. There's tons of warrior monk party members and Judge Dredd villains out there. Neutral Evil is how I'd personally define the IFCC as a whole, and Vaarsuvius has flirted with it more than once, but there no character that embodies it as such. Tsukiko, maybe? Trasson posted:Alignment is completely stupid, and the nine-point system all the more so, because Good/Evil and Law/Chaos are not equally meaningful, especially in a fantasy story context. I think OotS makes a good argument for Law/Chaos being meaningful, but ultimately less so than the Good/Evil distinction. Besides Belkar and Shojo, plenty of minor character conflicts have been between Lawful and Chaotic characters, Durkon's whole misfortune in the BRitF arc is that he had a very easy time integrating into the Lawful Empire of Blood and forged a meaningful friendship with a Lawful peer, only for the whole thing to crash down on him when they turned out to be really fuckin evil.
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Apr 11, 2018 09:20
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:Okay, that makes more sense. I'll admit I haven't read much 4e material, and whatever source I was using didn't make that distinction clear. That's more fair. Similarly Shojo and the paladins - they got on for a long, long time because he was good and so were they, and his chaotic ability to outmanoeuver them put him ahead of the game, but then he broke a rule that was too important to ignore. Neutral good and evil have always been the weakest parts of the graph, they're there because the structure demands it. I guess you could say it's people who aren't bothered by structures or randomness, but that's a weak character trait. sebmojo fucked around with this message at 11:10 on Apr 11, 2018 |
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Apr 11, 2018 11:07
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NihilCredo posted:y Rogue AI Goddess fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Apr 11, 2018 |
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Apr 11, 2018 13:24
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sebmojo posted:You're begging the question so hard it has a hat and a hardluck story in crayon in front of it. You don't need an alignment system to have good characters, that's not the issue and never has been. But OOTS makes a reasonable case for how it can enrich a story that already has good characters. If it didn't cover the spectrum of meaningful human behaviour it would get in the way, but it (basically) does, so it doesn't. This is where you're jumping the rails. It doesn't get in the way because it can be argued to mean almost anything, frequently several separate and contradictory things, usually due to the vagaries of the Law/Chaos axis. Shojo works just as well as Neutral Good as he does as Chaotic Good. Alignment "works" because it's a label you can argue applies to things after the fact. You tell the same story and don't bother to add the label after the fact, nothing has changed, nothing meaningful is ultimately said by contesting whether Shojo is Neutral or Chaotic Good. The difference, in so far as we can arbitrarily define one, does not matter and tells us nothing of substance. That's the definition of adding no value.
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Apr 11, 2018 14:04
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Captain Oblivious posted:This is where you're jumping the rails. It doesn't get in the way because it can be argued to mean almost anything, frequently several separate and contradictory things, usually due to the vagaries of the Law/Chaos axis. Shojo works just as well as Neutral Good as he does as Chaotic Good. lol ok e: also, explain how you'd do V's temptation without the alignment grid sebmojo fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Apr 11, 2018 |
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Apr 11, 2018 14:15
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I sure hope Rich is OK.
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Apr 11, 2018 14:50
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sebmojo posted:I really hope rich is ok. Chaotic Rich
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Apr 11, 2018 15:33
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sebmojo posted:lol ok Exactly as-is, with a few things reworded very slightly.
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Apr 11, 2018 16:43
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Oh God the mod is caught up in the alignment argument too. I really hope Rich is okay.
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Apr 11, 2018 16:44
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Nenonen posted:Chaotic Rich So we have the law neutral chaos axis, but would the other one be... Rich, Oglaf, Thunt?
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Apr 11, 2018 16:52
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