Testing, testing, 1,2,3 is this thing on?

Hey all,

DM pitched an idea about incorporating a dash of religion/alignment into our sessions. Stumbled upon a pretty good Dragon (#305) article regarding the subject (just ignore 3ed references), take away from it what you will (clerics need not apply), I quite liked the religious belief - archetypes/alignment angle on it. Spice up your character as you see fit, it could exercise and trigger more variety ingame, and bait some roleplay.

Uploaded the 8 page article in PDF format here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/217189301/faith_honor.pdf.html

Great Article, Fonz.

I read through your document and I, for one, would be very interested in trying to involve "Dieties" in a way that involves more than just bestowing Clerical spells. I see the potential for inter-party squabbles though if members happen to choose to worship opposing Dieties (the document referred to any follower directly opposed to your Diety as being an outright enemy). If Dieties had a much more active role the daily life of people in the world and the choices of each character could upset or please their Diety (or maybe an opposing Diety that was affected by a character's choice) it could get very interesting indeed. Of course, this does add another level of creativity and responsibility on our GM as it would be up to him to decide if, when, and how the different Dieties manifest, take action or do whatever else Dieties might be doing on any given day.

I would also be interested in looking at alignments more seriously since most games seem to pretty much forget all about alignment driven choices and possibilities of their character once the "LG" has been written on the character sheet. Most players seem to play their character's alignment as that which is closest to their personal alignment. At least this has been my personal experience with alignment play over the years. Very occasionally I have played with a GM that rewarded/punished players for good/bad alignment play and those rare games have been pretty interesting.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

I’ve never really been a huge fan of alignments in role-playing games. People and by extension the characters they play should have more depth then most alignment systems allow for.

I read a great line in an AD&D book one time that said something along the lines of “it’s alright to be lawful good and a jerk”. The problem I see happening with all this is that some of the players or worse the dungeon master will become alignment nazis and by extension rp nazis. This will of course ruin the game.

Alignments, at best, should be used as a guide and nothing more. Characters should have more depth then what alignments allow for in most role-playing games. Things in the Saturday game have been going well and I think already the characters personalities shine through. It would be a shame to ruin the game by arguing on the forums about what the meaning of chaotic evil is for example when in fact no one will be exactly right. One persons lawful good will be another persons lawful stupid after all.

Now do not get me wrong. I don’t think that some playing lawful good should be acting chaotic evil for example, but alignments aren’t meant to be cut in stone where you have to act exactly a certain way and be nothing more then predictable and programmed according to what alignment you picked. There are many ways to play each alignment and I don’t think we as a group should get crazy or go overboard on the subject of alignments.

As far as deities go I really don’t have issue with characters who aren’t clerics worshiping a deity, but I don’t think they should gain any benefit or powers from such worship. It should be strictly for role-playing purposes only. The only characters that should gain benefits from worship would be clerics and paladin which they already do through spells and other powers.

Fleshing out the world and the gods is something I suggested awhile back and I even have a dozen or so made up, but again any such use of deities should be for background and role-play purposes only and nothing more.

Konrad,

Thank you for the thread and the article. Rather than influencing the party's discussion at this stage, I'll simple acknowledge receipt of the article and that I've read it. I'll share my opinions once more have weighed in.

Highwayman brings up some very valid points. I agree that a game can devolve into a shouting match full of alignment nazis if alignment hunting if it is taken too seriously and further that the 9 given alignment choices are rather limiting in the scope of the massive gray area between the stated alignments. You bring up a very good quote about the LG character who is (or can be) a jerk. It is very true that a loudmouthed jerk can be obnoxious while still being Law abiding and Good natured even though the LG stereotype is the ridiculously nice and honest character. I have absolutely no problem with using alignments as a guidepost in role play; I guess my concern would be more of players that tend for alignments of convenience. An example might be a Paladin who robs someone just because the church can't see him do the deed. By no means am I saying that the present group has exhibited that sort of dichotomy, just that I have observed it more than once in previous games.

I definitely like our group dynamic and play style so far after only one session and my comments weren't intended to say that we should change things up just because I arrived in the group or anything.

With the Diety discussion, I certainly didn't mean to infer that characters would get special abilities due to worshiping effectively. Just that it might be interesting to have a pantheon that takes a more active role in the world such that if you please or upset a Diety, they just might do something to you or possibly for you. Temporarily or permanently, Good or bad... that would be for the DM to decide and would make for some interesting role play.

Just my 2 cents...

I'm going to give the article a read and compose my thoughts a bit before replying in more detail. I will say, however, that particularly when one gets into questions of alignment, such issues need to be dealt with in the context of the culture of the game world. To refer back to Saks' mention of "frontier justice" on the FG2 site, summary execution of bandits has in fact been customary and acceptable at various times and places in human culture, with trials either cursory on completely non-existent. (For example, see the actions of "military tribunals" during the siege of Leningrad, where those caught hoarding supplies were summarily executed by the Red Army. Evil? Maybe, but arguably lawful evil.)

Camlin has chimed in with even more very good points. There are so many different times and places that exhibited "frontier justice" in the name of the law, sometimes with the knowledge and permission of the established "law" and sometimes with their blissful ignorance. The American wild west period, the Gestapo tactics of the SS during the second world war (for that matter the Japanese, American and as pointed out Stalinist Russia) all did horrible things in the name of the law during and after the war. And what of modern (and even early) intelligence agencies around the world in the name of their government?

Camlin's point of what behavior would be "normal" and/or "acceptable" by the local (or regional, national, whatever) government are spot on in my opinion. Indeed, the limited level of "law" in the early medieval ages (usually a "might makes right" philosophy more than the classical and romanticized "Camelot" system of judgments was prevalent from my understanding of the history of those ages).

So, yes, I would whole-heartedly agree that if assassinating a being for a locally accepted reason (wrong race, species, actions, whatever the case may be) is performed, it can be perfectly in line with "the law". I liken this to a black man entering the "wrong" establishment in the early 20's century in the American south and being lynched for it... the killers would almost certainly have felt that they were operating within the law, even though their actions would most likely not have been listed anywhere as acceptable in any contemporary law books (only as an acceptable course of action of the region). That same lynching in New York City would have been handled differently by local law enforcement than the local sheriff of the south.

Good stuff all around in this discussion, I am impressed.

Well lets bring this conversation back to the fantasy world...

Going back to the example of the "darkness creature" we killed. Cadfan did not have any problems with the killing and he would consider himself a good person. He viewed the creature as some sort of infernal thing without a soul. Killing it was justifiable. He did advocate imprisoning it at one point but only because he was concerned that it would explode causing blindness or worse. If you recall he was knocked unconscious and was near death after the creatures's leader was dispatched. He also would have little trouble with executing any of the skulks unless one was captured and began to exhibit a purpose beyond simple evil.

Now on the other side of the coin he was uncomfortable with hanging the roadside bandits. This despite the fact that they had clearly recently killed and raped innocent travelers. These bandits needed to be brought to justice and he would have no problems with killing them in a fight but he was uncomfortable with executing them. He is not stupid however, and if he were in a situation where the bandits had to be set free or killed he would opt to kill them. It is something that would bother him.

That is my reading on how I would play Cadfan.

tegeus

I have played in campaigns where folklore and mythological beliefs were very strong elements, and very influential in PC's daily lives and their actions. Deities would communicate to you thru dreams (geas like) and be watching you every step of the way. Key to all this was a DM who rewarded/punished players for good/bad alignment/beliefs play. Important factors were that the PC's were still common adventurers, never granted, nor gifted, with any permanent, otherworldly benefits/blessings, just trying to go about their business (to the best of their knowledge) and not to wrong the gods. While having divine intervention by pantheons of choice when they were pleased (or upset) from time to time.

I agree that everyone’s take and interpretation on alignments will differ (sometimes way off the chart). But, nothing is more boring than an over predictable robot PC (can anyone say LG Paladin). I dare you to make life a bit more difficult for your PC...get out of your comfort zone, DON'T take the easy way out (as in lazy habit of playing your character's alignment as your own, playerwise), could allow for more interesting play.

I'm all for the DM fleshing out the world and the deities in it a bit more.

First of all, let me thank everyone for their comments. It's great to hear the varying perspectives. To be clear on where I'm coming from, let me make a few points:

1. No religion is going to be unilaterally imposed by the DM in this or future campaigns.

I'm not interested in putting the very few creative energies I have into coming up with a world full of deities, belief systems, etc at this time. I'm certainly not going to introduce a complete pantheon of gods now that we've started this little adventure. What I'd rather do is have an improvisational spirit. If one of your PCs feels the calling of religion, introduce your ideas in role play and we'll run with it.

If we're going to have a small pantheon of gods, I'd rather ALL of us bring ideas to the table and introduce it as an integral part of our campaign from the beginning.

2. Clerics or other religiously-minded characters will not receive special, deity-based powers.

That's not the nature of C&C (as written). If we agree to create something like this in a future campaign, fine. But I can assure you, this won't happen for this campaign (for the same time/creativity reason above).

3. Alignment (just like Class and Race) does not define the whole character.

An LG Paladin (or a Dwarven Fighter, or a Human Wizard) can be interesting, boring or something else based on how well the player role plays the character. That's why High's suggestion that we answer a few questions about our PC's background becomes so important. It gives us more data points to play with.

And I suppose that's what I wanted to suggest regarding Alignment. How can you use it to better define your character? Even if it's just a few more data points. It won't be everything.

4. Morality isn't about GOOD vs. EVIL. It's about what's right and wrong-- for you.

Everyone who acts in what they consider to be a moral way is 'right'. Those that don't act in the same way are often considered 'wrong'.

In thinking through this topic and after reading your posts, I realized that Good and Evil are really hard to define. Perhaps we know them when we see them. That just makes them subjective.

I think John's point about the context of the situation (for you) and Tegeus' reasoning for Cadfan's actions demonstrate that it can be difficult to define the Good and Evil part of the Alignment spectrum. It's much easier to have a personal moral code that you try to live up to.

5. The part in the Dragon article on Philosophers was VERY interesting.

When I read the Philosopher perspective in the article, I almost fainted (I was sick at the time). That was very close to what I had been thinking. I have a slightly different way of presenting it, but many of the same concepts are there.

As I said, I'll start a thread with my specific ideas soon.

My previous entries on this are strictly talking from experiences and musings of campaigns past. Regarding the Dragon article, it's one of the best I have read on the subject personally. But I'm not selling anything, that's for damn sure.. just throwing it out there as an interesting anecdote on the subject. Besides, we are well on our way on this one, makes no sense to start incorporating deities and full fledged belief systems into the mix at this stage.

My thoughts are more universal on the subject, not to be crowbared into these sessions. Too in-depth and involved can get a bit longwinded; prefer dungeon crawls nowadays due to time constraints.

…just throwing in my last 2 coppers on the subject.