For me, alignment issues tend to become problems when folks use alignment to act a certain way at a table that disrupts the experience for others at the table.
@NautArch Or as I put it, "using alignment as an excuse to be a jerk" is a player problem.
I learned a lesson early on from a good DM that was "you can tell me what alignment you think you are, but I'll let you know what alignment fits you best by how you act. Yes, I keep track, just like Santa Claus with his naughty and nice list ...."
@JohnClifford YOu put it very nicely that alignment is an indicator and helpful guide for roleplaying. But the decisions you make at the table are really what matters. Ifyou make disupritve decisions, then you're a disruptive player.
But in general, alignment at my tables has never really come into play, and when it has, it generlaly hasn't gone well.
@KorvinStarmast Like my running joke with our silver dragonborn paladin that his decision to hammer-punt a severed zombie head in the direction of a Barovian citizen changed his alignment to evil because he killed a guy.
In our rotating DM game, it became a bit of an issue as people acted one way, but it was contrary to their 'alignment label'. I tried to turn that into a plot when I was DM and it was favorable.
Another player, when DMing, had a bad guy read our alignment tod etermine how they'd respond. But my character had a ring of mind shielding, so even that got borked.
Our druid was concerned that she wasn't playing her alignment effectively (she's new to D&D) and I told her to focus more on playing the character she wants to play rather than constantly trying to frame her actions with an "is this chaotic neutral?" filter.
I agree that alignment by itself is not usually an issue. But I think a game feature's worthiness shouldn't rest on "it only causes a problem if your player is prone to that"... I just don't really see how its inclusion improves the game anymore, over using the same space for other character or personality building advice.
@Carcer Being "Good", in my opinion, means actively pursuing good deeds. Merely offering strangers a kind response when they ask for the way to the tavern isn't enough
The bulk of my D&D days were 3.5e in my tabletop club at school. I was pretty much out of school when 4e came out and didn't have a group or the capacity for playing online so I was late to the party there.
The feel for that setting was really good (pesonal taste, of course) and it may have been a function of the people who I was playing with. (No munchkins in that group) I really hope that Crawford and Mearls find a way to get that laced back into 5e.
Yes, but here is the differentiation: If he sets out to help stranger, then this is an active act to do good. If it merely happened that someone asked, it was by coincidence.
@LucasF. The problem with your example is that you are overburdening the good character with a motive force to go out and do something. You can be good wthout being a type A evangelist. you can be the Type B evangelist by setting a good example. You are calling on all good characters to be evanelists. Can you perhaps see a problem with that?
@LucasF. I work with a bunch of folks at chruch in some of our service groups who are amazing Type B personality witnesses to their deep faith. We also have a few at the other end of the spectrum.
I'm not a religious person, I can't comment on religious matters. My only contact point with religion is the fierce, dogmatic "dark ages"-like religion in my settings, which is (probably) quite unlike religion in the modern ages
An old saying attributed to St Francis of Assissi: "preach the gospel each day. Use words only when you must." (Meaning being "set a good example; walk the walk, don't just talk the talk.") OK, diversion into that thing is over, apologies for that
@LucasF. You are very kind, I realize that one must be careful about dragging RL relisious stuff into a casual conversation. And sorry, I just had to deal with an "in your face" thing this weekend, so I'm maybe too close to it.
@KorvinStarmast Speaking as an atheist, I've never had, and never will have, a single problem with anyone on the basis of their beliefs or spirituality. Where I object to it is when they try to make their beliefs my beliefs.
@KorvinStarmast I realize that any discussion about the relativity or absoluteness of "good" and "evil" will inevitably end in a discussion about religion, one way or another. But just in case you were worried that it offended me, I assure you that it did not.
As odd as it might sound I consider myself more-or-less an agnostic atheist. I don't believe in a higher power, but I'm open to the possibility that someday I'll be faced with irrefutable proof that there is one.
And my lack of religion is mainly due to my not having strong enough conviction in any of them to choose one, rather than being opposed to religion itself (and the undeniable fact that some utterly horrific things have been done in the name of religion, Christianity as well as any other)
@KorvinStarmast As in "I'll never accept the idea of a god, even when faced with irrefutable proof of its existence"? I've met a lot of morons, but not one with this mindset, no
I do think that some people are far too quick to lean on religion as a crutch for their prejudices or as an excuse to not make major decisions in favour of leaving them to providence, and also that it becomes a convenient scapegoat whereby someone's genuine accomplishments are assigned to a deity but also their failures are their own because they've failed to uphold some arbitrary standard of piety.
@Nyakouai even when faced with irrefutable proof of its existence Actually, the hard atheist takes the position that such proof cannot exist, so they'd never be faced with that. I tended more toward the view point that John expressed a few posts up.
(case in point: I once saw a post about a surgeon who'd performed a very dangerous and intricate surgery that saved the patient, and the comments were overwhelmingly about praising God for saving that person's life. And I'm like 'but the surgeon...')
@KorvinStarmast Ah. Indeed. Hmm... Quite perplex about that. It's not saying they wouldn't believe if they were presented with evidence, so not unreasonnable, but claiming such evidence cannot exists... (probably cannot or cannot cannot?)
@kviiri My one regret in not staying in that French class back in grade school is that I never got to learn French, and now I can't read Voltaire in his original tongue. That gent had a sharp wit. Granted, I did enjoy learning Spanish.
@Nyakouai That's a good question. probably cannot or cannot cannot? I think that will bepend on which "hard atheist" one is talking too. It's not like there's a canon. :)
@KorvinStarmast Ok, so possibly unreasonnable, especially given the somewhat blur notion of god... meh... As long as everyone is respectful of everyone
Most of the kids in my school went English first and Swedish second, I went French first (on the grounds that I knew English anyway) and English second (because Swedish is mandatory so I'd get courses of that anyway)
French native, I picked German because of poor father's advice and not wanting to pursue English... And got stuck with it for 7 years of studies. I can barely say "I'm a potatoes salad"... On the other hand, two years of Spanish, and I can read it on a somewhat basic level
@BESW Great article, but he needs to fact check. Even Catholicism describes one god in three parts as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Catholicism actually describes "on god in three persons" and there is even a Christianity.SE Q&A on that. The author may wish to heed his own advice. :-) (Thanks for the link, good article and not just for game creators, good for a GM as well)
@JohnClifford Even gendered pronouns are a constant source of anguish when you're translating ~anything into Finnish. Especially police shows. you need to get creative to translate the classic "how do you know it was a she?" bit.
I invented my own conlang for the game I'm developing called Caran. My favourite thing to say in it is "Ko hi'gatalek omnenbara nitaye!" which translates to "I will smite you with an all-powerful chicken!"
@goodguy5 Ah, el bano, si! El bano es mucho mas importante que las patatas
Kind of reminds me of a post somewhere, sometimes ago about "how to speak europeans languages for a french - Espagnol, you end all words with a or o. Italian, you do the same, but you wave the hand angrily"
Of course, there was the other way with "French - Half of the letters are silent, don't ask why"
@JohnClifford It's super complicated, of course, but grammatical gender is basically a categorical function. They could be red and blue or up and down, it's still a way to help you match bits of sentences together with each other so you can tell what goes with what in complex grammatical structures, or with less complexity in other parts of grammatical structures.
@JohnClifford In addition to the other answers, why they are specifically classified as masculine and feminine instead of something like "group A" and "group B" --- in eg. French you use the same words for "he" and "it" (for masculine things) and similarly for "she" and "it" (for feminine things).
@goodguy5 You know how in Ancillary Justice, Breq just sorta guesses at genders when she's speaking a language that requires it? A lot of first-language Tagalog speakers sound like they're doing it too when they speak English, throwing in whichever pronoun comes to mind at the moment.
I used to live right next to the Polish neighborhood, so I was fairly used to seeing billboards in Polish. But then one day, I saw this undecipherable pharmacy billboard. After about 15 minutes of googling, I determined it to be Tagolog.
@JohnClifford oh, another thing: my language lacks the concept of definite vs indefinite. That was quite a big barrier for many at our English class who didn't have enough exposure to English media at home :P
