Having a set-in-stone alignment system is sometimes useful- it lets you know which targets are hurt by particular spells, decide who gets to be smited, and so on. But sometimes it's nice for all dogs to be Goodbois and Goodgirls, whether their alignment says they can be or not.
So, who defines alignment? In a functional sense, you as the GM define alignment. But (hod on to your brains, people, I'm about do discuss philosophy) do you define it in a Kantian sense, that certain actions (like lying, killing, and kicking puppies) are always evil no matter the context and no matter how much joy they bring to the wider world, or a Utilitarian sense, that actions are only good or bad depending on their wider outcomes ("we have to lie to the princess because her knowing the truth would be bad for the peasants"). Can a wicked creature do good, and thus attain goodness, even temporarily? And, most importantly, who keeps track of this in your game world? Do the Gods keep objective counters tracking who is evil and worthy of punishment (and does an evil god then reward those people? How does that work?), or is alignment only what morality makes of it (and there's no lasting objective scores, people are just people)? Are creatures who don't know any better (and some which explicitly have no alignment as they're not considered intelligent enough to have morality) still "good"if they're devoted to doing what they do well enough to make people happy? What this all comes down to is Christmas presents, naturally, and who gets them. How you can use moral philosophy in your game: - D&D's inbuilt alignment system is a little more Kantian, but it's also a bit super racist (all Orcs and Drow are evil, for example). Eberron's alignment system decoupled race from alignment, saying that creatures of those races tended to behave that way because of their societal upbringing. Perhaps there is a true moral philosophy of 'Goodness', and striving towards it is what confers the status of being Nice. - Maybe your world's version of Santa only delivers to people who have made progress in taking more good actions than the last year, and taking those actions, regardless of whether they were mind-controlled, persuaded, or dodged around, confers the status of Niceness. - Alternately, your world could always have some kind of corruptor-devil, a creature that travels the world distributing gifts to the Naughty. They reward people who've made little actions of Evil (lying, stealing food, cheating on taxes) to further sway them to more committed Evil deeds. Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 21 December 2019. Comments are closed.
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AuthorI'm Luke. He/him pronouns. Archives
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