You thought A Halfdragon mindflayer was bad?

[Gabrielle]

Drizzt Sucketh hard. At least here are other cool drow out there like Liriel Baenre .

[Reveilled]

Someone needs to make a "I played drow before they were cool" t-shirt. :D

[metadigital]

I liek Githyanki and their swords of silver cord vorpality.

[Vashanti]

RAAR!

 

[metadigital]

Wow! I was just teleported twenty years ago, and back again!

[Gabrielle]

Drow are sexy.

[Musopticon?]

Drizzt Sucketh hard. At least here are other cool drow out there like Liriel Baenre    .

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Liriel :">

[Darkside]

Someone needs to make a "I played drow before they were cool" t-shirt.  :D

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I didn't play Drow before they were cool, but I didn't know they were cool. Does that still count?

 

And if you must know, she was chaotic neutral.

[metadigital]

Ah, Chaotic Neutral: the alignment of the true individual, who might just as easily watch you burn in the fire started by their stray cigarette as save you!

 

Reminds me of the ethics of the Pirates of the Carribbean ...

[Gabrielle]

Ah, Chaotic Neutral: the alignment of the true individual, who might just as easily watch you burn in the fire started by their stray cigarette as save you!

 

Reminds me of the ethics of the Pirates of the Carribbean ...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's one way of describing chaotic neutral.

[Deraldin]

Someone needs to make a "I played drow before they were cool" t-shirt.  :D

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I didn't play Drow before they were cool, but I didn't know they were cool. Does that still count?

 

And if you must know, she was chaotic neutral.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I had a cousin who was convinced to play in an evil game. She created a chaotic neutral female drow character. From what I recall, the explanation that she gave for her being on the surface was that she was the daughter of the leader of a major house. The leader had been killed and the character didn't enjoy the new responsibilities and constant assassination attempts so she picked up and left.

 

Don't think I've ever played a drow. Played a bunch of planetouched, a couple kobolds and the rest were standard races.

[Darkside]

Yeah, Kirra (the drow girl) v2.0 is a planetouched, but I'm thinking about changing her back to a drow to counter the infamous mindflayer. Plus, now she's a rouge/illusionist, instead of just a rouge. Ooh I know, I should make her a half-fiend drow! "

[Calax]

oye... Githyanki... don't remind me, they make an appearance in Demon stone (along with a drow)

[Kaftan Barlast]

Drow..  chaotic neutral..  chaotic neutral...

 

I think there are too many simplistic prejudices about being evil. If I was to play a Drow I would play her evil because thats their schtick

 

 

 

..except that I hate the alignment system as it is too narrow and simplistic to be able to correctly describe any but the most generic characters. I usually leave that line blank and roleplay it instead.

[Judge Hades]

That is why many new d20 System settings and rules variants, such as Arcana Evolved, dropped the alignment system.

[Reveilled]

I've never seen a particular problem with it. A "complex" character is usually just True Neutral, like most people are.

 

Then again, other than for Paladins, Alignment has never been a particularly big issue in my game, other than for alignment-based spells and damage. When in doubt, shove in True Neutral and roleplay however you want is how I do it. Within reason, of course. If you're robbing the home of the evil Duke, that's suitably true neutral. If you kill the innocent elderly housekeeper because she witnessed the job when she went into the Duke's study to do the dusting, then you've crossed the "evil" line and you're now Neutral Evil if I'm DM.

[Kaftan Barlast]

But why even have an alignment system? The only basic function it fills is to easily tell you who are the badguys and who are the guys in white shiny armour. It feels alot more like something youd use to handle NPCs as its IMO nuts to try and apply it to players.

 

 

..and regarding NPCs.. I mean, if youre faced with a 5m horned monstrosity that reeks of sulphur and has flames comming out of his ears... you know that guy is up to no good "

[Reveilled]

But why even have an alignment system? The only basic function it fills is to easily tell you who are the badguys and who are the guys in white shiny armour. It feels alot more like something youd use to handle NPCs as its IMO nuts to try and apply it to players.

 

 

..and regarding NPCs.. I mean, if youre faced with a 5m horned monstrosity that reeks of sulphur and has flames comming out of his ears... you know that guy is up to no good "

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

*shrug* The Alignment system is so that spells like "Protection from Evil" and weapons like the Holy Avenger work acording to simple rules rather than a fairly vague and ambiguous thing like roleplaying.

[Kaftan Barlast]

But the alignment system was constructed before those came along, wasnt it? I mean, its like levels were not designed just to give undead something to drain.

[Vashanti]

Rolemaster has no alignment system.

 

You might like that game; it's good stuff.

[Reveilled]

But the alignment system was constructed before those came along, wasnt it? I mean, its like levels were not designed just to give undead something to drain.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Not really. They were constructed at the same time, at least going by my oldest books (1e). The Alignment system is fine if you only try to use it for what it was originally intended, that is, alignment based spells, items, and rigidly defining characters when you're acutally playing D&D Gary Gygax style ("You enter the 10'x10' room. There are 10,000 drow in here. Since you are the good guys, they attack. Roll for initiative"). As soon as you try to use it to rigidly define characters in terms of how the players can roleplay when you aren't playing a "Go to the tavern, find out where the dungeon is, end of roleplay" campaign, then yes, it's a completely useless and confining system. In such a situation, you're left with two options, the first being to scrap the system, the second being to just loosen the defnitions and reduce alignment's importance to just spells and items.

 

I go with the second option, mostly because I don't find it particularly difficult to decide how someone is acting in terms of alignment, partly because I have ten years worth of experience with the system, such that I have sufficiently complex and nuanced definitions of the alignments to not find the categories particularly constricting on roleplay*, partly because good and evil are never much of a concern in my campaigns, so alignment has never become obstructive to the game, and partly because none of my players have ever complained about it (except the one that killed the housekeeper, who got upset when I told him his character was now evil). I find it useful for what I use it for, so I personally see no problem with it.

 

*definitions which, being less overt, tend to obstruct my enjoyment of CRPGs that use much blunter definitions, cases in point being the "steal everything and kill everyone" Dark Side path in KotOR, and "Make fun of skeletons to become chaotic" in PS:T.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Rolemaster has no alignment system.

 

You might like that game; it's good stuff.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Ive got the ..mm.. 4th edition right here but Ive only read it briefly.

 

 

Im studying as many RPG systems as I can as part of my game dev education so Ive got a huge pile of them to go through

[metadigital]

I've never seen a particular problem with it.  A "complex" character is usually just True Neutral, like most people are.

 

Then again, other than for Paladins, Alignment has never been a particularly big issue in my game, other than for alignment-based spells and damage.  When in doubt, shove in True Neutral and roleplay however you want is how I do it. Within reason, of course.  If you're robbing the home of the evil Duke, that's suitably true neutral. If you kill the innocent elderly housekeeper because she witnessed the job when she went into the Duke's study to do the dusting, then you've crossed the "evil" line and you're now Neutral Evil if I'm DM.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nah, alignment is too poorly defined as a consequence of it being misunderstood in the first place.

 

There is plenty of scope for two lawful good characters to be fighting each other, for example: if an evil potentate makes a bad law, then the lawful good sherrif either:

1. follows the law, because that's what she does, or
   
2. protects the innocent, because that's what she does.
   

Therefore, two characters of the same alignment can quite easily interpret the same situation differently and still be within their alignment.

 

I know option A seems more lawful, and option B seems more good, but I could also argue that A is lawful-neutral, and B is neutral-good. (Assuming for the purposes of this example that the sherrif couldn't change the law; a Kobayashi Maru, is better to test ethical boundaries.) The crux is the semantics of "law": does lawful mean

• "obey laws of society", like democracy, or does it mean
  
• "obey the laws of God", like a theocracy?
  

[Reveilled]

I've never seen a particular problem with it.  A "complex" character is usually just True Neutral, like most people are.

 

Then again, other than for Paladins, Alignment has never been a particularly big issue in my game, other than for alignment-based spells and damage.  When in doubt, shove in True Neutral and roleplay however you want is how I do it. Within reason, of course.  If you're robbing the home of the evil Duke, that's suitably true neutral. If you kill the innocent elderly housekeeper because she witnessed the job when she went into the Duke's study to do the dusting, then you've crossed the "evil" line and you're now Neutral Evil if I'm DM.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nah, alignment is too poorly defined as a consequence of it being misunderstood in the first place.

 

There is plenty of scope for two lawful good characters to be fighting each other, for example: if an evil potentate makes a bad law, then the lawful good sherrif either:

1. follows the law, because that's what she does, or
    
   
2. protects the innocent, because that's what she does.
   

Therefore, two characters of the same alignment can quite easily interpret the same situation differently and still be within their alignment.

 

I know option A seems more lawful, and option B seems more good, but I could also argue that A is lawful-neutral, and B is neutral-good. (Assuming for the purposes of this example that the sherrif couldn't change the law; a Kobayashi Maru, is better to test ethical boundaries.) The crux is the semantics of "law": does lawful mean

• "obey laws of society", like democracy, or does it mean
   
  
• "obey the laws of God", like a theocracy?
  

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The only problem being here that if this was the situation in a module by the guy who invented the alignment system, the "can't change the law" assumption would be invalid, as the correct solution in a Gary Gygax campaign would be for the Sherrif to go to the taven, find out where the potentate's castle is, find the castle, and then battle through fourteen hundred floors of monsters crammed by the thousand into tiny room after tiny room. Whereupon reaching the fourteen hundredth floor, the sherrif (and his party) would discover that the potentate had retreated to his secret lair in the underdark (in the module titled Vault of a Thousand Billion Drow), only accessible by first completing the modules Against the Megadeath Giants, Against the Killamawhatsit Giants and Against the Ohmygodtheresfiftymillionineachencounter Giants.

[Walsingham]

In my experience, people who are of opposite law/chaos alignments get along far worse than peopel of opposite law/evil alignment. If you know what I mean. I know they certainly would have more trouble adventuring together.

 

"Why are there toenail clippings in the rationpacks?"

"Somebody has eaten all the chocolate chips out of these bags of trailsnacks."

"You didn't set up the tents while I was getting the water?"

 

...Plaintive cries of a lawful character among chaotics.