fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3582 ]

[ SECRET POST #3582 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3582 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries]

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[Daredevil, Wilson Fisk/Vanessa Marianna]

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04.

[Overwatch]

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[Mob Psycho 100]

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06.

[Malcolm in the Middle]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 39 secrets from Secret Submission Post #512.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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01. https://67.media.tumblr.com/a42ac1acb109387eb41f8884fc00a836/tumblr_ofd1zubKpc1sivacmo1_540.png

I don't think about them much but I kind of like them for individual characters. I completely agree with you on whole species though.

Pretty sure this exact line of reasoning is why house rules exist.

Broad species alignments and rules for how those alignments apply exist for people who don't really want to roleplay that much in their tabletop roleplaying game, and are instead just there for the hack n' slash. If you aren't going to put anything into your character in terms of personality in the first place, then painting everything with a wide brush is totally fine. It also stops people from taking an overpowered paladin class with an alignment that must be lawful good and then using that character to indiscriminately murderize everything they come across.

Other groups will go whole sessions without a single touched die. In those sorts of groups people usually change the definitions of each alignment to suit a more realistic personality type. They also might not have hard and fast rules for alignment changes, and instead opt to give the players more control over when they decide to take one (since they're more likely to stick to it for plot/character reasons than your average power gamer).

Yeah but at the same time, if you're primarily interested in the narrative and character parts of role playing, you should definitely not be playing D&D (or probably most other games with a hard and fast alignment system).

I disagree. I think any system can be cannibalized for whatever you want to use it for. D&D has a pretty comprehensive and easy to learn system for making combat fair and reasonably balanced, and it's got enough contingency and reworking that has gone into it over the years that it's very useful for those players who love to be rules lawyers.

Just because a rule is in a book doesn't mean you must use that rule when you play.

Of course you can have fun in any system, and there's a wide range of possibility in terms of what actually happens at the table compared to the book.

At the same time, I think in general you're going to enjoy yourself more and have an easier time with games that have mechanical support for the kind of experience you want to have. There are games that provide really strong, integral mechanics for character and narrative role playing. D&D isn't one of them - it doesn't have many mechanics for it and those it does aren't really great (in any edition). For example, you know, the alignment system.

I mean, come on, man! You're talking about groups that barely touch the dice in a session - if that's the case, how actually relevant are dice-based combat mechanics for a game like that? And is it really better to build a rickety structure of house rules to force a game to do what you want, or to play a game that's actually designed to support what you want to do?

I get that there's a ton of inertia and comfort with D&D and it's familiar. But I also am really strongly convinced that D&D as a family of games is not good at a lot of things, including character and narrative.

I mean, come on, man! You're talking about groups that barely touch the dice in a session - if that's the case, how actually relevant are dice-based combat mechanics for a game like that?

Really useful for when you want something excessively simple that everyone is basically going to be familiar with for the times when you do need to pick up the dice? I mean, usually it's safe to assume that if someone has done any tabletop gaming they've played some D&D.

Unless they're a filthy Rifts player lol.

Yeah, sorry, I realized I worded that specific sentence weirdly. The issue isn't the dice, the issue is that D&D's combat mechanics are generally pretty involved and complex, more than is necessary for a game that's not focused on hack n' slash. They're not actually excessively simple.

I stand by my point that I think there are games that are just as easy to actually pick up and play, that provide much better support for all the other things that aren't hack and slash.

That might be true, but I'll still argue that D&D (at least some versions of it- 2nd ed in particular) are more or less suited to basically whatever one wants to make of it.

Feel free to like and use what you want to use, but you can easily finagle it to do what you want it to do regardless of play style. I think that really can't be said for some other systems (e.g. most things White Wolf related).

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2016-10-24 23:59 (UTC) - Expand

SA

Minor correction: instead of "dice-based combat mechanics" please substitute "complex, involved combat mechanics"

the dice aren't really the issue

apologies

Depends on the DM, tbh. I've been playing with the same DM for thirty years, and he has his own world, lots of concurrent stories running which adds to each party's narrative...it's a lot of fun, and I love all the stories that have come out of the role-playing.

Species alignment is more of a generality than a mandate. Exceptions were liberally explored in licensed material. (Drizzt is the most notorious, but there's an entire cult of good Drow.)

"Hey, wait a minute. Aren't dark elves evil?"
"Oh, my, no. Not since they became a player race. Now the whole race consists of nothing but Chaotic Good rebels, yearning to throw off the reputation of their evil kin."
"Evil kin? Didn't you just say they were all Chaotic Good?"
"Details."

Seriously, D&D has had everything from a heroic succubus to a heroic mind flayer. There's a reason the Monster Manual tends to say "usually chaotic evil," and when it says "always," there's usually a reason for that, too.

In fact, either Dragon or Dungeon (the magazines for officially sanctioned fan content), had an entire issue devoted to playing monstrous parties, including how to roleplay the gelatinous cube.

Well, yeah. Exactly that, pretty much.

I don't think anyone at all actually uses species alignments unless - as stated - the only thing they want out of a session is to roll some dice, drink some booze, and make silly jokes about cheetos and mountain dew.

Well, there are useful spells like "Detect Alignment," if only to give Paladins a clear conscience when lopping off heads or turning undead.

Wouldn't want to accidentally the whole only good skeleton warrior out there, amirite?

True, I also think the alignment system can be a useful shorthand for religion-based classes, since right-relationship with your god is an underutilized game mechanic. Neutral Good deities may be somewhat consequentialist in their behavior reward system, but the PC will need to deliver the greater good for attention. Lawful Good deities will be a stickler for their rules, even if all it does is get the PC martyred.

SKELETON WARRIORS DUH-NUH-NUH-NUH-NUH

/matt and woolie

Best friends 4 lyfe.

For individuals, I see them more as what their compasses are set to. They can and will deviate but will tend to naturally veer toward their original settings barring the circumstance or external pressure.

For races, I see it as more a cultural thing. A culture that glorifies violence and domination above all would probably be some kind of evil, and the typical individual raised in that culture who would conform to its norms would have their individual compass set that way because upbringing and cultural norms do affect people. I don't like when every single individual in that society must be that alignment, though.

I agree that they have the issues you cite in general

I also think the D&D one in particular is just fucking terrible. Mostly because the law/chaos axis makes no sense whatsoever outside of very specific, Cosmic Struggle-type contexts. It works in the Moorcock fantasy paradigm that's one of the things that D&D is drawing on, but once it got detached from that, it stopped making any sense. And unfortunately it's now been normalized as this free-floating absurd nonsensical thing in nerd culture. Fucking D&D.

The entire concept of Lawful contains so many inherent contradictions that it's a massive challenge to play a character whose class is required to maintain that alignment. And on the flipside, if you're a person who dislikes orderly concepts, why would you even believe in the idea that there's some kind of strict dividing line between people who are "Chaotic" and people who are not? Wouldn't you believe that people are too complex to be neatly categorized in little boxes like that?

Edited 2016-10-24 23:10 (UTC)

It's not as contradictory as it seems. It stems from days when Lawful and Chaotic were linked more to the concepts of Cosmic Order and Chaos than Good and Evil. It's why you can have Chaotic Good and Lawful Good, as well as Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil. One determines their, well, goodness, but the other determines if you serve Cosmic Order or Cosmic Chaos. Basically: pick a god.

If you don't believe in that ICly, then that's neutral.

I take species alignment as more of a guideline than a fixed rule tbh, because it is silly that some races are all evil and others are all good, most DM's I've played with at least have been very flexible on that front at any rate.

I also tend to find the evil races to be more visually appealing so I like to play them if I can swing it. :P

For individual characters I think it can be fun though.

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