Adventuring is a lot less fun when the red dragon can defeat you by posting a copy of the deed and a no trespassing sign outside their lair.
DragonStar, and myself, respectfully disagree.
A legal document of writ does not mean you have no recourse - the original copy of the deed can be purloined from a courthouse/document store, accusation of crimes plus search warrants regardless of alignment are plausible (and arranging for evidence to be planted is certainly plausible, if difficult for the amount of influence most dragons have if they're connected to the right family), and because in counterpoint to your argument...
Few things are more satisfying than summoning Lawful Outsiders more amicable to your Good/Evil axis on the alignment chart to help you overcome a dragon's No Trespassing, Castle-Doctrine-Protected, Active Morality Legalese protected hindquarters by using The Rules against him.
It's the only form of Rules Lawyering I enjoy shamelessly, to the point of devil versions of Manfred Von Karma and Godot making obligatory appearances, and at least one literal Phoenix, a pointing, and an OBJECTION!
What you describe is not issue of alignment it's an issue of players not working together on common cause. This happen the same with all lawful character too. I remember a game where we had 3 paladins, you'd think they would all work together well. Thing was they all had different priorities on what to tackle in battle against good and evil. The littlest might send on off on crusade against some perceived injustice or evil.
I started to realize the problem with the group I gamed with a while ago, why I no longer game with them.
Yes the problem with my group was the players each were interested in what the game could give them, rather then what they could give back to the game. It didn't help that we had some people leave, then others join, so our group dynamic was thrown off. It also did not help that the campaign we were playing was itself chaotic, not in the free-spirited sense, but the don't now where it was going. In whole it made me pretty dissatisfied with the game, and well the group as well.
Yet my though on chaotic characters actually stem from me working on my own campaign, and trying to plan it so that I do not fall into those same pitfalls.
I have found on a whole the alignment system less to be a tool, and more of a crutch, or even as justification for a character's behavior. For example in the same group we had a player playing a paladin, that taunted a captive with the death of the captive's pet because the captive was chaotic evil.
The thing is I ran into it all the time, with different players and groups. There is always someone more interested in doing their own thing despite the rest of the party. Unfortunately they use Chaotic alignments to justify their actions.
I began to think that the alignment system itself that is flawed. It is this chart which we use to make a bland and faceless character, which most people then proceed to ignore other then as a game mechanic. I kind of wished that Paizo had removed it from the system when they revamped the rules, but it has become too entangled into the magic system I guess.
I kind of wished that Paizo had removed it from the system when they revamped the rules, but it has become too entangled into the magic system I guess.
No, just no. They didn't keep it because it was integral. Its actually easy to remove. Here is a series of changes you can make to remove it from the magic system. In theory being able to have mechanical impacts for your morality is cool and thematic, but in practice labeling and defining who you are is bleh. A number of people do house rule alignment out or have an alternative.
I'd also have to second (or at this point third, fourth, fifth, or whatever else) that it's an issue of players and not the alignments themselves.
I've had players who run perfectly heroic and wonderful chaotic characters, and for that matter, perfectly heroic and wonderful lawful characters.
I've had players who use the "It's my alignment!" justification to try and get away with Lolrandom style chaotic, or Lawful-stupid style lawful.
I've had one player who I had to ban from evil, then chaotic, then lawful, and the true neutral alignments one after the other. After then somehow managing to play a Neutral Good PC who fit entirely within the description of Neutral Good while also being a massive jerk, I gave up, rescinded her restriction back to simply "no evil", and upped the amount of play time given to my other groups in a effort to slowly weed her out without breaking a friendship.
I guess really the problem is not with chaotic characters, but with chaotic players.
I guess I am getting tired of how the alignment system has really become a mess, as each person weighs in their own idea how each alignment should be played, as well as using the alignment as a justification for their character's actions.
It doesn't help when the players are all set on making their own story, even if it interrupts the main story, or other player's enjoyment. It really does not help that most adventures are designed around the party being grouped together randomly, to justify the mismatched characters that seem to come about in character creation. Everyone wants to play the lead, have their characters in the spotlight, rather then focusing on the story itself.
I am currently actually writing a campaign the I hope would help with that. Yet even that I don't trust would help.
This is basically the issue. The players are being chaotic, not the characters.
First of all... Some people enjoy gaming just to blow of steam and joke around with friends. And that's cool too. It all depends on what people are there for that will determine what kind of game you have.
Good, evil, law, neutral... none of these are the 'funny' alignment. or really even the 'screw off' alignment.
Which brings me to the second point. If the plaers are OUT of character... the problem is the players. if the screwing around is IN character... then there should be IN character reprecusions for actions.
The Jails are FULL of people who can say "I'm CHAOTIC!!! I'm just doing what I WANTED to!!"
Playing 'in character' with their alignment... is not an excuse to derail things. If they walk up and insult other people... someone should pound them to jelly. If they attack a random person or steal from tavern owners... they should have the law after them.
But really... unless you have a paladin or cleric causing the problems... WHY is the term 'alignment' even getting brought up? There are no bonuses or penalties for moving it around the board... they can pretty much do anything they want and claim alignment... But what they WANT to do... doesn't affect the society that their playing in.
No, much better to handle this kind of thing OUT of roleplay.
The paladin wasn't the way to handle it, it was just the sort of character I'd like to see from these players for a change. :P
The problem is that most games forbid evil alignments but allow CN. So everyone who would rather play any evil plays CN instead and behaves evil, calling it chaotic.
And most games see good and evil as opposites that don't go together but are fine mixing chaotic and lawful which is as bad.
Funny story: last year when I joined a game where every player was new except for me, we had I think 3 CN characters in the group, one CG, and me the LE witch (heheheh).
I've never had an issue with CN/CE "do whatever I want" characters because I don't let them jsut get away with crap. If you break into people's housesfor the lulz, you WILL get in trouble unless you are VERY lucky. I stamped out that kind of behavior early on. The police have magic too, you know.
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I am starting to think that some players just confuse evil and chaotic at times. I always have thought the alignments as this good equals selfless evil equals selfish. While Lawful means that a person has a ridged moral code, and chaotic means that they have a flexible one. Yet I encounter too many people that play Chaotic anything as selfish characters that only occasionally do good things, while doing terrible things at the same time. Either that or they play self-serving characters that have to be the one in charge, or the party has to listen to first.
I really am starting to see that really it's a problem with the people I used to play with mainly. Having a good group that you enjoy gaming with really helps bring together a party. If you enjoy gaming with people it does not matter the alignment you play. I would venture that you could even do a good anti-hero, or evil campaign with the right group of people, because if they mesh well then they would be more concerned with having fun together, then having fun themselves despite everyone else.
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I am starting to think that some players just confuse evil and chaotic at times. I always have thought the alignments as this good equals selfless evil equals selfish. While Lawful means that a person has a ridged moral code, and chaotic means that they have a flexible one. Yet I encounter too many people that play Chaotic anything as selfish characters that only occasionally do good things, while doing terrible things at the same time. Either that or they play self-serving characters that have to be the one in charge, or the party has to listen to first.
I really am starting to see that really it's a problem with the people I used to play with mainly. Having a good group that you enjoy gaming with really helps bring together a party. If you enjoy gaming with people it does not matter the alignment you play. I would venture that you could even do a good anti-hero, or evil campaign with the right group of people, because if they mesh well then they would be more concerned with having fun together, then having fun themselves despite everyone else.
THAT exactly. Congrats for reaching it by yourself :-)
There's also just the meaning of the word 'chaotic', which most people consider synonymous with words like ...
Disorder
Confusion
Anarchic
Riotous
Purposeless
Thank you, Thesaurus.com. Finding a better word than 'chaotic' (and a better word than lawful, for that matter) might help.
Adventuring is a lot less fun when the red dragon can defeat you by posting a copy of the deed and a no trespassing sign outside their lair.DragonStar, and myself, respectfully disagree.
While you might want to spend 4 hours arguing semantics with an angel, most of the players at the table probably want to hit something with a sword or break out their brand new set of d6's for that nuclear annihilation fireball spell. I don't know if there's usually one of you in every group, much less a majority of you in most groups.
Yeah, that angel is guaranteed to have good loot somewhere. Maybe we can sell its wings...
I dunno, I'm playing in a lawful party and our DM is having too much fun with us.
"You'll need to take the lightning rail to get from point X to Y in time, but they only allow government officials to ride! Hope you're good at jumping!"
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My rule with alignment has always been to let my characters write the alignment they think their character is on their sheet when they start and from their I keep track of it on my end. If they are playing a class that cares about alignment, they really want to keep to their written alignment, or they are new I'll give them some help when I see them sliding into alignment shifting territory. Beyond that though I let them play and have the consequences of their actions fall where they may. The thing I think most GMs forget is that you should think of consequences to the actions of your players so that they begin to understand that doing crazy and disruptive crap in your world will often have just as nasty of consequences in the game world. Second I remember that in the worlds I run alignment and what is good, evil, chaotic, etc. is the GM's perview and therefore eventually my decision to make final judgement upon. Last I remember that alignment isn't something that sits above a characters head for all to see, only really matters with a few spells, and doesn't prevent characters from doing what is needed. In the end it will only really matters once the character is dead anyways and most games won't play that far. Also remember it's not like the players can't check themselves in game if they want to.
With that said I do get the C woes. I think a lot of the crap comes from players not getting that these games are built around group play and think that taking the C
1. Excuses them from working in a group
2. Most likely are coming from a background like videogaming where the characters surrounding the character you play are not as integral to story based decision making as your own are. In short they are used to being the commander if a unit and not a partner among equals.
Combine those with things like the belief that L=no fun or that G means you have to be passive and you quickly get a lot of players wearing the C.
Finding a better word than 'chaotic' (and a better word than lawful, for that matter) might help.
How about "principled" versus "opportunistic"? Would that make sense?
Interesting side note on this topic. My PF group has 6 players, and alignments have been all over the place. Willy nilly, just whatever someone feels like playing. 2 players in particular are "always" evil, to the point of predictable blahness but whatever.
Anywho, one of our players took a census of what everyone's alignment was, and somehow, completely unintentionally, everyone is a different alignment, comprising 6 of the 9 alignment axis... The only alignments not represented in the party are Lawful Good, Neutral Evil, and True Neutral.
Which means that, yes, we do have Chaotic Evil, Lawful Evil, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, and Chaotic Neutral characters in the same party; completely unintentional. I pity our DM.
Adventuring is a lot less fun when the red dragon can defeat you by posting a copy of the deed and a no trespassing sign outside their lair.DragonStar, and myself, respectfully disagree.
While you might want to spend 4 hours arguing semantics with an angel, most of the players at the table probably want to hit something with a sword or break out their brand new set of d6's for that nuclear annihilation fireball spell. I don't know if there's usually one of you in every group, much less a majority of you in most groups.
The semantics come into play AFTER the players have gotten the materials together to arrange for the summoning, often by having to find and recruit someone with suitable Planar Ally action, in addition to pulling off capers to fund their acquisition and attempted eminent domain over the dragon's lair/corporate headquarters.
I didn't include ALL the steps of how to get from Point A to Point B. :)
Also, in the case of DragonStar, some may want to pull out swords and fireball nukes, but others will want to whip out guns and mechsuits, and some will just want to hack the 'Net to try to do a digital seize of assets, trying to hack past elaborate Green Dragon designed security runes and other defenses. It varies.
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I don't really know why I am posing this, but I was wondering is anyone other then me gets tired of GMing a party of chaotic characters, or even playing with a character in a party of chaotic characters.
I was playing in a game with a bit of a pirate/swashbuckling theme, and the party was primarily chaotic. It really burnt me out playing in that game. People all really wanted to do separate things, and really there seemed to be no real party cohesion. It did not help that the GM's story was a little weak, and really had too many subplots distracting from the main story.
The thing is as a GM too, I hate chaotic characters. People seem to use the alignment to justify screwing around. And it's not even things that are interesting, sometimes it is just a deliberate attempt to throw a monkey wrench into things. I don't know why people play like this. It's like they like poking the other players trying to get a rise out them, but I can tell that if they are, they are doing it subconsciously. I think that it might just be a bad habit that they developed.
Maybe it is just the people I played with.
While I agree with many other responders that the issue is not the alignment, it's the players, I would like to emphasize another aspect of the issue:
People all really wanted to do separate things, and really there seemed to be no real party cohesion. It did not help that the GM's story was a little weak, and really had too many subplots distracting from the main story.
This sounds a lot like a game I played, where everyone had very disparate goals, and the GM struggled to get us to work together--but his plot was also just more or less "find out more information about this thing because."
The thing was, this was a game that used no alignment system, so you couldn't blame that.
The real issue was the party did not have a strong common goal. The party also, consisting of people who kind of met each other randomly, had no deep loyalties to each other.
Chaotic characters may not be inclined to follow the rigid structures of society or may think a rule is worth breaking if it helps them get to their goal faster, but that doesn't mean they only want to "work alone." The individualism that comes with a chaotic alignment isn't about "every man for himself," it means that chaotic people value first, individual freedom over following social stricture, and second, that they value other people around them based on their personal regard for that person rather than a social position others may have. For example, the princess may ask LG Paladin Pat and CG Barbarian Barb to go fight the dragon. Both will agree, but part of Paladin Pat's reasoning will be because the princess said so and the princess is an authority figure; part of Barbarian Barb's reasoning is that she respects the princess's leadership skills and trusts that if the princess thinks she and Pat are the best candidates for the job, they probably are. (And both Pat and Barb agree that fighting the dragon will save innocents' lives, so they're on the same page there.)
In short, chaotic and lawful people (and chaotic and neutral and chaotic and chaotic people) can absolutely agree to do something together--just how they arrive at the reasons why may vary a little.
Therefore it's important at the start of a campaign to ensure two things:
- The party members have reason to trust each other beyond "you met in a tavern and decided this adventuring thing is a good idea"
- The party members are handed hooks by the GM that reach them at a deep enough level that they can all agree on achieving the same goal together (even if their reasons for achieving that goal are different from each other).
I find it's helpful to have people create characters together and they can talk about how they know each other. Having them all from the same organization or area can also help -- "you are all members of the adventurers guild" or "you are all in the military unit" or "you are all from this town or frequently travel to it that you feel loyal to it" or whatever.
People seem to use the alignment to justify screwing around. And it's not even things that are interesting, sometimes it is just a deliberate attempt to throw a monkey wrench into things.
Having played World of Darkness, Exalted, Champions, Mutants and Masterminds, BESM, L5R, and a number of other alignment-less systems, trust me, eliminating alignment does not eliminate douchebaggery on the part of certain gamers. Those who are determined to be douchebags will find a way.
This means that if people are screwing around or just deliberately messing stuff up, it's time to have a chat with them. Ask them to show you the rule that says "Chaotic characters have to be dicks." Make it clear this rule does not exist. Make it clear that most tabletop RPGs are designed around cooperative play, and if they are not willing to be cooperative, then this is the last game you're playing with them.
Yes, people do use the chaotic alignment (especially Chaotic Neutral) to make excuses for certain kinds of behavior--but so do gamers do so with nearly every other alignment as well (see also: Lawful Stupid Paladin). So understand that's all this is: an excuse. The underlying behavior for that excuse is what really needs to be addressed.
trust me, eliminating alignment does not eliminate douchebaggery on the part of certain gamers.
Those who are determined to be douchebags will find a way.
Yes, people do use the chaotic alignment (especially Chaotic Neutral) to make excuses for certain kinds of behavior
but so do gamers do so with nearly every other alignment as well (see also: Lawful Stupid Paladin). So understand that's all this is: an excuse. The underlying behavior for that excuse is what really needs to be addressed.
d (- -) b
I ran a GURPS game where the players just wilfully screwed about and ignored the plot. I have also ran a Runequest game where a similar amount of dicking about happened. Neither of these games uses alignment, but both had dick players involved, wanting to muck about and not willing to engage with the plot, gameworld or pretty much anything beyond their own arsing about.
Just to make something clear, I've also run many games where the players immersed themselves well and had fun with the plot and world, so I'm hoping it wasn't just my GMing that was the issue!