I’m Maligning Your Alignment

Probably no big surprise here, but a lot of my opinions about rpgs and gaming in general cut a bit across the grain. One of the topics on which I often have the most animated debates is on character alignment.

The biggest issue I have with such systems is that, even if the various alignment possibilities were well defined, I simply cannot accept that all of the various permutations and combinations of ethical and moral values can be pigeonholed into nine neat little slots. Jess and I might both be playing “lawful good” characters, but we’re not going to react the same way; if I had a guess I’d probably be “more lawful than good”, while my companion would be the converse. This isn’t the problem. The problem is that in that situation, it’d be very easy to accuse one of us an alignment infraction, if you don’t recognize the grey area.

Next biggest issue, and this is the one that actually gets me into the most knife fights, is that no one has the same conception of good and evil. You and I might consider cannibalism to be evil (and I certainly hope we can agree on that), but certain isolated cultures as recently as the middle of the previous century would beg to differ. I consider myself a good person overall (at least I try to be), but I have a neighbor who is sincerely convinced that my politics and choice of personal vehicle have earned me more "bad Karma" than Martin Bormann. So we in the industrialized nations of the 21st century each have a different idea what is good and what isn’t, and guess what? None of our ideas agree completely with any portrayal of a quasi-medieval fantasy setting. I mean let’s face it: a gang of unemployed thugs takes up a vocation involving invading people’s homes, slaughtering them when they defend said homes, and stealing their property. All because they look different and/or have a different religion. What our society’s values would see as serial hate-crimes, the game environment considers the brave feats of daring-do about which skalds sing. So we’re role-playing in a time and place of different values, you say. Absolutely, I reply. That’s exactly my point as well.

Here’s a further illustration. In your typical fantasy setting, no player-character is going to be put to trial for killing a goblin (unless it is by the goblins, but I’d suspect they may have divergent views of due process…). Whole battalions of adventures can wipe out entire tribes with impunity. Why? Well, it is obvious: goblins aren’t people! They’re monsters! Little more than talking vermin, you’re doing society a favor by getting rid of them. Got it. And yet, every time I’ve done the following trick, the GM has blown a gasket and threatened some form of bogus alignment punishment. Here’s the trick: everyone knows that the very first dungeon you go into when you’re first level will have some kind of wuss encounter either right outside the dungeon or just inside. It’ll be with something really weak, like low-hp kobolds or something. I generally try to take one or two alive, but not out of any sense of mercy. Instead I’ll truss them up and run them ahead of the party down the corridor to set off traps*. Whoa, there! That’s just evil! But why? I mean, they aren’t people. We’re here to kill them anyway. In fact, the same people who are now calling me a monster were a few minutes ago asking me what the hell I was thinking taking them prisoner in the first place. Society doesn’t recognize these creatures as having any rights. I consider it better for them to suffer the effects of their fiendish and cowardly traps than my hygienically-superior companions. Clearly we have a disconnect here.**

“Aha!”, shouts the bald dwarf in the back of the room. “But good and evil are not subjective”, he begins trotting out a speech we’ve heard him give many, many times. Only this time it is actually relevant to the matter at hand. “We have spells that can ‘detect’ evil. Priest and paladins wield holy weapons that do additional harm to ‘evil’ creatures. Indeed”, he flusters. “Some of these fiends are so objectively evil that they can only be harmed by these blessed artifacts. So clearly, good and evil are tangible forces, and all of your wishy-washy relativism is a bunch of humbug! And…”, he concludes in an even louder voice, “This game sucks! Call of Cthulhu is the only game anyone should ever play!”

And he has a point. About the alignment question, that is. If good and evil have mechanical considerations in addition to social ones, then clearly someone has to decide what, for the purpose of the game, makes the grade. That person is the GM, as if he or she doesn’t already have enough to do. But I reiterate, the GM and I might not be on the same page, and while he has the final call, creating a complex and evolved system of social mores and communicating it to the players, in addition to everything else a GM does is just too much work to ask. And if we simply say, “Well, it is more or less a medieval society”, then we run into the issues of “are dragons people?” and “why isn’t anyone burning that sorcerer at the stake?”. Obviously we likewise can’t just say, “Well, it is medieval technology, but with modern values.” Because if we did, adventurers would lose their fear of dragons only to soil their chainmail at the approach of the jackbooted minions of the Greyhawk Civil Liberties Union.

Its a pretty problem (to me, anyway—I’m well aware that thousands of gamers don’t even think about any of this stuff and are scratching their heads—if you’re one of them feel free to call me a geek). What’s my solution, you ask? Well, depending on the game I’m running and the story my players and I want to tell, I do one of three things:

1. Ignore the issue and dungeon on! Yes, believe it or not, I can do exactly that. More often, however, I choose to…
2. Chuck the whole thing right out the window. There are no alignments. Or to put it more precisely, there are an infinite number of them, and each character has to decide for him/her/itself what moral compass to follow. Sure, you may follow one or more religions which provide you with guidance, but no mere mortal can live up to the ideals of a divine being, and besides, the teachings of the gods do not always provide a cut-and-dried answer for every single question you might encounter. And all those spells and abilities that detect or affect certain alignments? Useless. Figure it out for yourself.
3. Expand the alignment system. If it is necessary to the story to have objective good/evil and law/chaos, I use the expanded alignment system that, even though I came up with a very similar idea twenty years ago, Monte Cook published in The Book of Divine Might. In a nutshell, good/evil and law/chaos are rated on a scale of 0-9. Zero represents neutrality, and is not available to most people; everyone has some opinion even it is simply, “I don’t like to see people get hurt”. Ratings of one or two represent these latent tendencies and if detected for using a spell or class ability read as “neutral”. Three and four are more visible tendencies and are subject to effects that target that alignment axis, but only at half efficacy. Other ratings are normal up to nine, which is the unattainable ideal of that axis, reserved for deities and outsiders. This system makes for a more diverse array of grey areas, and likewise makes the next part a lot easier for the GM. Now when someone professes a certain alignment (say for example a paladin who has “Law7, Good5” written on her sheet), I’m watching. But I hate it when people say, “Your character would never do that!”, or “I’m changing your alignment for that!”. Instead I just calmly make a note to myself to “slide” those numbers in whichever direction is appropriate. I say nothing to the player, but if they cross a critical threshold, I’ll make sure to adjudicate the effects: say our above-mentioned pally slips below her minimum level in Law. She’s making her way through a dungeon with her buddies and, as pallies do, tries to detect evil frequently. I inform her that she detects no evil. They find themselves surrounded by demons. She asks, “Do I detect any evil now?” I answer, “Nope.” She says, “Shit! Must’ve been the orphanage we burned down! We’re screwed, guys.”

One might get the idea that I’m opposed to the alignment system completely. And I’m really not. The alignments do serve useful purposes (though “They tell you how to play your character” shouldn’t be among them), including game balance. All I’m saying is that *I* prefer things to be a little more complex than the usual nine archetypes.

Feel free to weigh in.

* I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: If Gary Gygax hadn’t intended for us to do exactly that, “ten-foot pole” would not have been on the equipment list of every version of the game ever published.

** And no, I didn’t always do that, and I never did it with characters who were supposed to be saintly; I’m just making a point.