Alignment Pt 3: Oh Gods I Thought I Was Done

*Does a cool crouching pose, fingers in an ironic(?) peace sign* I'm doin' it for my players. And that one person who asked me to explain a bit on why I don't actually want people trying to play those specific character types. Except at some point I might. But I'll get to that. 

Also the formatting was weird on the phone on the last post, but Blerger here seems weird on most counts, so I messed with the post a teensy bit and maybe that helps. 

Also, I wonder if it would be jarring if I cussed a little. 

 

Why The Fuck Use Alignments?

Right off, I think there are two reasons I still often have them in my games, even if almost no one cares to use them. (And certainly I think in modern games most people have abandoned their use.) 

The first is mechanical: there are many spells and abilities, monsters and characters, and even magic items in the old school versions of the game with powers specifically detecting, affecting, or only usable by specific alignments. A random thug probably isn't going to be able to heft that Mace of Disruption, but is going to be quite content with the Envenomed Dagger of Being Really Bad or whatever. Evil is going to 100% feel it when they are repulsed by goodie-awesome-shoes Paladin. Detecting good? Evil? Whatever you need to get the info you desire. 

Now, by limiting the alignments, like any other option in the game, you cultivate a particular play experience. In my case, I don't want my table to be at odds with one another. The ideal is to have the characters working together without an in-game reason to be at odds with one another. My game is deadly and tough enough that often they need to be enmeshing their skills, and blowing out their powers together to survive or succeed in picking up that sweet tomb-gold. 

So, the question is why keep them in if there is the opportunity for friction within the game? I feel like the benefit they have is in helping define, even in the slightest way (old-est-school players classically hate backstories), the character. And by having characters that are already leaned toward cooperation, the party as a whole has a better chance to gel as a unit. 

I think when the players are in the mindset of mostly good-aligned people, it cultivates more the kind of experience I want to have at the table and (usually) in my game-world. My games usually tend toward faerie-tale (and baroque political and interpersonal interconnections, sure, but that's a different matter =P), not edgy 90's style lone-wolf coolios, nor overbearing quandaries of some sort of  grey-scale morality in a grimdark world. And definitely not the haha-so-random tonal wrecking-ball that some players might want to bring to a setting. I'd like the characters to be the ones the tales are eventually about, not the ones that get melted in a pot, or thrown off the Cliff of Being Malevolent, or trying to throw a poor NPC off the Cliff of Being Malevolent, or whatever. 

These guys are Neutral Baaad Cliff-throwers of the Realm.

 

But! But! If we're all on the same page tonally, do we really need what some people would say are limitations, specifying the direction the PC will make in his or her decision making process when interacting with the game-world? Is it another one of those artifacts of older editions that are kept in for nostalgia purposes? After all, I can literally say, "Hey, you primitive screwheads," to my players, as I am wont to do, "play some good guys in a medieval-style story-book setting, right!" and I am pretty sure everyone would be on board with it. (But, man, it's fun to zzap people with out of alignment magic items! Haha-haha.)

So, I am pretty sure that in a future-as-yet-only-stuck-in-my-head-game I won't be using the 9 point alignment array.

Hopefully all of this blathering makes sense, because...

Ok IF Alignments Are In, What's The Deal With The 3 Point Thingy? Also Alignment Languages

Well, where did the alignments come from originally, you might ask? (Unless you're one of us nerd-types who roll about in remembering things like this, creature-like, splashing random factoids over our brainbox and call that knowing stuff.) Well, Gary and Dave, they made a little thing called Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures. Seriously, that was what the original was (sub)titled. Well, as you see within that fairly elaborate title, "wargames" sort of anchors the descriptors. And wargames have to have sides. 

I do not actually own this. It is not $10.00 now.

 So, I also heard Gary liked a book called Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson. Within that book, the good guys were agents of Law, and the bad guys and many of the monsters and whatnot are on team Chaos. Later my dude Michael Moorcock would, of course, cite the same book as inspiration for the BIG multiverse and its' unceasing war of the Eternal Balance between Chaos and Law. Both of these authors were clearly influences on early Dungeons & Dragons (and have a listing in the famous Appendix N in the later DMG, the list of "Inspirational and Educational Reading").

The early alignment system was a way to pick teams! (Probably maybe. It's what I'm sticking with =P) Throw in Neutrality to round things out for unaligned animals, and those who try to maintain the balance (or Balance capital B), and you have the original three-point alignment system.

I think, for mechanical games-uses, I can dig it. Compact, easy to deal with, doesn't take a lot of explaining for new players. 

There is something weird, though.  

That's from pg B11 of the Moldvay Basic set, cause I can't be bothered to find a picture of any other example. These things. Well, if you didn't wonder about the general use of alignments before, or argued, or cared at all, now there's something many people could get behind as a wtf is that used for? I don't remember anyone really using it when I was a kid (okay that would have been me, since there wasn't anyone else to run games. Whatever. It still counts). I do remember people arguing about what it all meant, though. Why did that exist? weelll....

To quote Gary (with all the misspellings left intact) from message boards in 2007:

As D&D was being quantified and qualified bu the publication of the supplemental rules booklets. I decided that Thieves' cant should not be the only secret language. thus alignment languages come into play, the rational being they were akin to Hebrew for Jewish and Latin for Roman Catholic persons.

I have since regretted the addition, as the non-cleric user would have only a limited vocabulary, and luttle cound be conveyed or understoon by the use of an alignment language between non-clerical users.

However, stretching those creative brain-juice-muscles that sloop about wetly, I, in a fit of inspiration, decided to use that weird-ass clunky artifact of early editions. Shoehorn in Angels, Demons, and Djinn, the mind-heat of some Primordial gods, and voila!

To quote me:

 In Filios, the alignments map onto the psychic fire of the Gods, and thus the 3-point system, instead of being part of a cosmic Moorcokian struggle, is a sort of soul-fire, or affinity for beings that actually exist in the world. The language of Law, therefore, is the language of Fire Without Change, the Angels. The language of Chaos is spoken by those powers to fuel change and destruction, Fire Without Smoke, the Endjinn (bindable, sometimes, into machines to run them interminably, or into containers by the real danger-seekers). And, of course, Neutrailty in the middle. This language is the language of Demons, Fire Without Light, who are much, much of the time doers of great evils, but are the only of the Gods'-dreams capable of real choice. Famously, 3 of the Twelve Great Saints are, of course, Demons, who achieved the Repose of Perfect Understanding and are venerated Spheres-wide.

Alright! I got me an excuse to use the 3-point alignment system, the languages, too. And incidentally have three classes of super-duper-natural beings to pepper the landscape with that aren't big booming Gods or scheme-y Infernals. 

And that's why I use alignments, Thank you and good night.