That other good...

[MrSin]

So, a friend of mine was complaining about something and I thought it would make a good forum topic. Alignment thread, so beware!

Anyways, so there were a group of players who said they can't play without alignment because they couldn't tell who to fight, however once they figured out who was evil they thought they could do pretty much anything to them*. This rubbed the wrong way.

This however, wasn't what made it bad. What made it hard to play with was them telling people how to play and live up to standards. A paladin in the party was told that if he wasn't constantly berating their supposedly good characters if they did anything against his code he deserved to fall, and so forth.** Telling someone how to play their own character really rubbed him and a few others the wrong way.

So I'm curious about opinions on either of these ideas? Done this to someone else? Advice on how to deal with this in regular play or organized play would especially be appreciated.

*:

Threaten to kill them, steal their stuff, break their things, laugh at their misery, desecrate their corpse. Things good guys do I guess? This wasn't always waiting until people were totally sniffed out as evil, but based on suspicions.

**:

Telling people how to play their character in how to play their character extended to stats(You have too much wisdom to do something that stupid!), spell selection(your character should pick this!), and other various things. Obviously people won't always see it the exact same way, and certain situations of ambiguity had a heavy handed opinion which isn't always appreciated.

Personally, this has always been a part of what bothers me about alignment or sharing character sheet information. Being told how to play and the like. Free will is a good gig I always thought.

[Ivan Rûski]

MrSin wrote:

Anyways, so there were a group of players who said they can't play without alignment because they couldn't tell who to fight, however once they figured out who was evil they thought they could do pretty much anything to them*. This rubbed the wrong way.

I'm sorry, but if you need alignment to be able to tell who to fight, something is wrong. Yes, playing without alignment can muddle things, but that means you actually have to think instead of casting detect alignment and saying, "I stab teh evil dude." Granted, the occasional kick-in-the-door and kill everything session is fun, but that shouldn't be the whole game in my opinion.

Quote:

A paladin in the party was told that if he wasn't constantly berating their supposedly good characters if they did anything against his code he deserved to fall, and so forth.** Telling someone how to play their own character really rubbed him and a few others the wrong way.

Telling people how to roleplay is a good way to find yourself not invited back to my table. Suggesting tactics is one thing. How to roleplay? Not any of your business. Even with tactics, it's only ok to a point. If someone doesn't want you to tell them what to do in combat, leave them alone. Let them do what they want so long as they aren't actively sabotaging the party.

[Calybos1]

There are multiple ways to play any alignment; jerk players will tend to favor the jerkiest interpretations.

[doctor_wu]

Then what happens if they are attacked by wolves which are neutral?

[Set]

Calybos1 wrote:

There are multiple ways to play any alignment; jerk players will tend to favor the jerkiest interpretations.

What he said. You get the wrong player, it doesn't matter if the character sheet says CE or LG, they are gonna use it like a bludgeon to make everyone else's experience less fun.

You get the right player, it still doesn't matter, because their CE barbarian will be a hard-drinking chain-smoking foul-mouthed goblin-hating-racist blast to play with, and their LG paladin will be awesome and inspiring and full of fun battle cries and corny dialogue and all 'lead by example.'

That said, there are some alignments that seem like catnip to jerks. CE, CN, NE and LG seem the most common choices.

Back in the days of 1st edition, there was even a whacky interpretation of true Neutral (Must balance good vs. evil! If good PCs are winning, I have to change teams and join the monsters to 'maintain the balance!') that could be even worse than CE or LG for party-PVP-disruption, but that's thankfully fallen out of favor.

[Klaus van der Kroft]

Set wrote:

Back in the days of 1st edition, there was even a whacky interpretation of true Neutral (Must balance good vs. evil! If good PCs are winning, I have to change teams and join the monsters to 'maintain the balance!') that could be even worse than CE or LG for party-PVP-disruption, but that's thankfully fallen out of favor.

Ah, yes, I remember having a player on a few campaigns that played that way, though instead of joining the bad guys, he just went "Welp, that's one good action too many for today. Gotta sit down and commit some negligence for a while".

Basically, he wanted the balance, but was too lazy to actually do the deeds. So he played the "If I don't help, I might as well be hurting" loophole the whole time.