Not so Black and White: In Defense of the Alignment System

"Always consider alignment as a tool, not a straitjacket that restricts the character.  Although alignment defines general attitudes, it certainly doesn't prevent a character from changing his beliefs, acting irrationally, or behaving out of character." 

- 2nd Edition AD&D Player's Handbook

"Each alignment represents a broad range of personality types or personal philosophies,

so two lawful good characters can still be quite different from each other." 

- D&D 3.5 Player's Handbook

via Know Your Meme

What is your GM's alignment?

There is a current of thought in the RPG-playing community that D&D's classic nine-part, Good-Evil/Law-Chaos alignment system is outdated, overly simplistic, restrictive of roleplaying, or just plain bad.  This is not a new complaint - it has been around since the first time a GM who had just learned about moral relativism in his Philosophy 101 class looked at his group's paladin and said, "Well in this country it's illegal to not kill babies.  What are you going to do?"  To this day, there are GMs out there who pull out all the stops to make every paladin fall just because they think Lawful Good is an unattainable alignment.

When you are told, "Here are the nine things you can think.  Have fun roleplaying!", then yes, that seems overly restrictive.  But that view of the alignment system is overly simplistic (Ironic that accusations of being overly simplistic themselves come from an overly simplistic view.  And doubly ironic that I am presenting such a view in an overly simplistic manner.  But let's continue, before I am buried under a pile of my own straw-men).  Alignment is really a two-axis spectrum broken down into nine parts for ease of use.  Different viewpoints are possible within any given alignment, not just between two adjacent alignments.  And it is possible for a Lawful Good character and a Chaotic Good character to see eye-to-eye on a situation, just as it is possible for two Lawful Neutral characters to have completely different takes on the same situation.

It is important to think of the alignment system as descriptive, not proscriptive.  That is, the thoughts and actions of your character define your alignment, your alignment doesn't define the thoughts and actions of your character.  The alignment written on your character sheet is a measure of your character's actions to this point, or perhaps represents the goal that your character strives for.  Furthermore, a character's position on the alignment spectrum is fluid, not fixed.  It is constantly shifting about as he or she makes new decisions, is confronted with new choices, and has moments of introspection.  A Lawful Evil character may slip up with a few Chaotic (or even Good) acts before steering back to LE.  Some of the best roleplaying moments can come from a character's journey through a change in alignment.  After all, what is drama without character development?

What is D&D?

It's time to step back a bit.  This blog is generally aimed at an audience who plays or GMs table-top RPGs, but I have neglected another facet of my audience: people who are new to D&D entirely.  Since I started the blog, I've had some friends ask me about it.  What is D&D like?  How do I get started?

Now, there are several places I could send you to find out more information, but I figured, why don't I just explain it here, in my own words, for your benefit?  So I'll be doing this in three installments: this week, I will talk about D&D and table-top RPGs in general and how to get started with them; next week, I will post a starting adventure that I created recently, including everything you will need to run that adventure for some friends; and the week after, I will post an account of what happened when I ran that adventure for my girlfriend's parents and some of their family friends.

Everything is Dragons

For a while now, D&D has had a problem with its second D: dragons.  That problem, according to some of the people designing the game and some of the people playing it, was that there weren't enough of them.  Dungeons were everywhere, but dragons? Dragons were high-level monsters - a lot of adventuring parties never survived to see one, and many that did didn't survive the encounter.  The solution, of course, was more dragons.

But now D&D is suffering from a problem I like to call "everything is dragons."  Dragons are terrifying and powerful monsters; encounters with them should be rare and memorable.  Basically, they should inspire awe and fear - an encounter with a dragon should be one of the most dangerous, most tense, most memorable episodes of a campaign.  Unfortunately, the attitude toward dragons expressed by D&D over the past few decades has watered down the threat and the majesty of these iconic monsters.  There are four clear examples of this: kobolds, sorcerers, 3.5 edition's Monster Manual IV, and 4th edition's dragonborn.

Killing Your Characters

It should go without saying that death is an important part of RPGs.  Not just the death of monsters and bad guys, but death of characters.  That isn't to say that character death should be particularly common (though in some games it is), but it should always be there, lurking in the background.  After all, the rules for death and dying don't just apply to the bad guys.  For an RPG to really feel engaging, you need the threat of death, or the players' actions aren't realistic: "Oh man, this dragon is hitting us pretty hard! If we don't kill it soon, we may all end up... going unconscious for 8 hours and then having to try again."

In this post, I'll talk about PC death from both sides of the GM screen, NPC death, and raising the dead.

Editions

My first introduction to D&D was the PC game Baldur's Gate, a truly excellent game based on 2nd Edition AD&D.  Subsequently, I played Icewind Dale, which captured my attention (and heart) by allowing me to create all six members of my adventuring party.  I spent hours creating character after character, party after party ("Ooh, I could make a party based on the Justice League!  Or the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen! or the cast of Farscape!" etc.), all with only the barest of grasps on the underlying mechanics.  I had no idea what 18/00 strength meant, why a warhammer's damage was cryptically listed as "1d4+1," or what in the world THAC0 was.  All I knew was that I needed to slay awesome monsters and acquire a spectacular array of magical items.  I needed to read every book I came across, pick up every gem I found, learn every magical weapon's backstory, and talk to every NPC.  I needed to explore every inch of that world.

Looking back on it now, I'm really surprised it took me so long to get into tabletop RPGs.

Anyways, having been exposed to it before even knowing what D&D was, 2nd edition holds a very special place in my heart/RPG-bookshelf.  Today I thought, seeing as it is relatively early in my time as a blogger (blogist? blogomancer?), that I would talk about the various editions of D&D and what experience I get out of them.  And I guess I thought correctly, because here I am doing just that!