Time Out! is designed as a way for players to step away from the game for a minute and think about strategy and teamwork. Like a coach advising his team from the sidelines, I hope that the people reading this will gain a mental edge as they head back into the game. In each installment I will dispense my sage advise by comparing an in-game situation to a real world situation. Sports analogies will be used often but not exclusively.
LG: Look! Over that hill! A brood of evil, lawless monsters have gone on a rampage and they are burning that village!
NG: Those people need help! We should slay these monsters in the name of good!
True Neutral: I will join your fight in order to restore balance between good and evil!
CN: Um ... you know, that doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.
True Neutral: What do you mean? These creatures are evil and they are attacking good people, therefore upsetting the balance.
CN: So, if there was an overabundance of good in the world, would that mean that you’d go out and burn a village?
True Neutral: No, that would be too proactive. I’m not initiating a change, I’m responding to someone else who is altering the status quo.
CN: So if a crusade of do-gooders were threatening to wipe out all evil would you be on the side of evil? After all you want balance, right?
True: Of course not! Just because I’m neutral doesn’t mean I care about evil. Naturally I wouldn’t complain about a world that was all good.
CN: That’s decidedly non-neutral of you. It seems that you’ve clearly chosen sides. Is there any situation where you wouldn’t root for the side of good?
True: If good and evil were already in perfect balance. Then I would hope for a series of ties.
CG: This guy is starting to sound like a jackass.
True: Hey! What about him? Why is he coming with us? He’s supposed to be neutral AND chaotic. Wouldn’t the interest of chaos be better served if we didn’t stop the monsters?
CN: According to the book, I can do any damn thing I want and still be true to my alignment. I’m not supposed to make sense.
True: Well, you’re making sense now, aren’t you?! HA!! In your face!!
The preceding conversation, while silly, was supposed to demonstrate the kinds of conflicts that can arise while different characters are trying to figure out what their alignments mean. Alignment (or a similar concept) plays a major role in many games, especially D&D. Alignment conflict can be a big distraction for an adventuring party. Not only do people with opposing alignments clash but characters with similar alignments can bump heads because they have differing views about right and wrong or law and order. In this column we will explore the concept of alignment and figure out ways to keep it from driving a wedge between the characters. To this end we will look at personality conflicts in the work place and derive lessons on how to apply these techniques to solving alignment problems.
Alignment Problems
There are two main problems that I can identify regarding alignment in D&D. The first is a lack of understanding of what the alignments mean. The second is the flawed nature of the alignments themselves. Once some effort has been put into clearing up these problems, it becomes much easier to solve alignment conflicts within the groups.
When you are dealing with clashing personalities in the work place, the first step is always to get the respective parties reading from the same page. In this case, we are talking about page 87 in the PHB.
Defining an Alignment
Everyone seems to have their own ideas about what the alignments mean. While I was flipping through the 3.0 Player’s Handbook the other day I came across a line that no one else seems to have paid much attention to. To paraphrase, it says that even a lawful good dwarf could have a greedy streak and therefore he might steal on occasion. Even to one who makes a habit of breaking RPG conventions this takes a minute to absorb. A lawful ... good ... dwarf ... stealing?
No one is perfect, every character is an individual and alignments are only guidelines: we have all heard these phrases over and over again. Still, it can be hard to explain this level of flexibility. If being lawful and good doesn’t stop you from stealing then what are alignments for anyway?
The key is justification. Stealing is illegal, but the law doesn’t treat everyone equally. Stealing isn’t good, but maybe some people deserve to lose their stuff. Or maybe the dwarf feels that theft is a way to reward himself for good deeds. The line of thought might go, "I helped save the village, the least I deserve is a fraction of the loot that would have been stolen by the villains." This same character might be completely honorable in all other aspects of life, showing mercy to helpless enemies, risking his life for others, etc.
If a lawful good character might steal on occasion, what does that say about people’s interpretation of the other alignments? I’ve over heard my share of debates over the subject of alignment. What does a lawful good character do in a lawful evil kingdom? Does he respect the law or fight for good? There was another "moral dilemma" left over from the TSR days over whether a good character should kill a baby orc, knowing that it would grow up to be chaotic evil.
My answers to these questions were always:
- Lawful good characters should only enforce good laws. A lawful neutral character would disagree with this distinction but the question wasn’t about him.
- NO DUMBASS! I can’t possible perceive how a good person could even think of killing a helpless baby, for any reason. Even if he did decide it was the right course of action, a good person could never bring himself to do such as thing. Some people have thrown in extra conditions like, "What if you had been attacked by the baby’s parents and killed them. You can’t leave this baby in the wild can you?" I still don’t buy it. The good thing to do would be to take the baby orc and raise it as your own child. Barring that you should at least find a suitable foster family, whether they are orcs, humans or others.
The question of orc infanticide shows just how wide the rifts are between different interpretations of alignment. Some people might agree with my argument. Others are crying "Wait a minute! This orc will grow up to be evil!" Let’s examine the point. I can concede that a demon or similar entity could entirely sinister because it was composed of "evil energy". But a fleshly creature has free will, right? And if not, then how can it be evil?
If a person has no choices and his actions are predetermined than he isn’t evil, he’s an automaton. Even an automaton-like person can experience suffering and therefore he needs to be respected. What then do you do about orcs? Slay then en mass because they are mindless automatons who are inherently evil? To do so might prevent the suffering of humans but it would cause suffering among a great number of orcs whose only crime was being born.
I’ve always had a problem with sub-human races who are incurably bestial and savage. Feral humanoids would probably prefer the deep wilderness to stealing from the strange and frightening civilized lands. I’ve always had a theory that most people are two steps away from being Nazis. If we’re killing the orcs for being evil (and raping human woman, we all know that has always been the hidden implication with half-orcs) then why don’t we kill the halfings too? They’re greedy and they steal and they speak a language that is different.
While we’re on the subject, why are people scared of orcs? If they are so chaotic that they only respect brute strength then they could never form a military force strong enough to overrun a single village.
I’d give a dozen 1st level commoners with clubs even odds against a handful of orcs, even if the orcs are stronger and more viscous. Each orc only has four hit points, meaning there’s a 50/50 chance he’ll drop from a single lucky blow. Even if the orcs won it’s unlikely that they’ll have more than one or two survivors.
The fact that orcs do form large war parties and threaten entire kingdoms is a tribute to the strength of their society. Managing a barbarian horde is a daunting logistical and organizational challenge. People like Ghengis Khan and Attila the Hun were master diplomats and planners. You have to be when your army is held together by personal charisma instead of military discipline. Something has to prevent mass desertion besides the threat of force. If you spend all of your time chasing down recruits who change their mind then you won’t have time to pillage anything.
Simplified Alignments
Why can’t people agree on what the alignments mean? I don’t know, but the important question is how do we translate alignment into a meaningful guideline for your character’s actions? I personally feel that the new D&D books do a fairly good job of answering these questions, yet the conflict continues. In the hopes of clearing things up just a little more, I present the following new definitions. Instead of rewriting them from scratch, I’m attempting to reverse engineer the nine alignments based on how they are actually played.
Lawful Good: If anyone tries to subvert the law for evil purposes, I’ll bust their friggin skulls in. If someone disobeys the law for good purposes, I’ll bust their friggin skulls in.
Neutral Good: If anyone tries to harm the innocent, I’ll bust their friggin skulls in.
Chaotic Good: If I see anyone doing evil, I’ll bust their friggin skulls in. That Lawful dude better watch his step around me or I’ll bust HIS friggin skull in too.
Lawful Neutral: You ain’t from around here are you boy?
True Neutral: Look at all these assholes trying to bust each other’s friggin skulls in.
Chaotic Neutral: If anyone messes with me, I’ll bust their friggin skulls in.
Lawful Evil: Do as I say or I will have your friggin skull busted in!
Neutral Evil: I might just bust somebody’s friggin skull in today.
Chaotic Evil: I’LL BUST YOUR FRIGGIN SKULL IN!
In addition, I’d like to add three new alignments: Chaotic Stupid, Lawful A**hole and Whiny Neutral.
Strategies for Coping with Belief-System Conflicts in an Adventuring Party or Dungeon Crawl Setting
The point of this column is to takes some cues from the work place and use them to help solve problems where characters are at odds over alignment. The techniques used to solve personality conflicts in the workplace are designed to keep people’s feelings from getting hurt. Solving alignment problems in D&D is often necessary to keep people’s friggin skulls from getting busted in.
Again, I’m not saying that a certain amount of conflict within a party isn’t inevitable, even healthy. On the job, competition can bring out the best in a team. Opposing viewpoints are an asset to wise decision making. During the game, discord in the group brings out some of the best role-playing. However, serious antagonism over work ethics or behavior can be extremely counterproductive. To prevent this from happening, apply the following techniques I’ve distilled from countless lectures and meetings on the subject.
- Make the problem extremely complicated, then oversimplify it. I believe we have accomplished that so far. Also, your strategy needs a really long title.
- Make sure that people are assigned to tasks that suit their personality. If you have to, separate people who clash too often. A good strategy will recognize that some people have to be prevented from offending others. However, what some people don’t know won’t hurt them.
- Paladins will not consort with evil characters and they can detect evil magically. If someone in your party plans on playing a paladin then don’t play an evil character. This have nothing to do with conflict management but I thought I’d bring it up because some people apparently don’t think about things like that.
- Respect a paycheck player who just wants to do his job. There are always going to be mercenary types who don’t care which way the party heads as long as they get a share of the booty.
- If someone wants to step up and take charge then let him. If he screws up once, squash him.
- Everyone should get a second chance, except the wannabe leader who has taken it upon his or her self to be responsible for the group.
- If a character gets too far out of line then you have to terminate him. It might suck that the player has to be resurrected or start again as a first level character but those are the breaks. It is unrealistic to think that a macho warrior type character would suffer a fool beyond a certain point. It is also unrealistic to expect a raging zealot to tolerate something he views as evil.
Now get out their and play!
