Is it ok to believe in Alignment as faith (Dungeons & Dragons)?

edit… sorry bad link. Thanks you can google dungeons and dragons alignment.

Try this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)  

Well, for some reason it doesn’t work.

@Jeruba Bad title.

Yes, and so’s yours. It’s dropping the right parenthesis, I think.

Tried again…never mind. I don’t know the answer to your question anyway. I just wondered what “alignment” meant.

After reading the article on Wikipedia after searching Alignment (Dungeons and Dragons), it isn’t a faith structure as much as it is a way of categorizing people. It has nothing to do with you reconciling with Catholicism or not.

@Jeruba Alignment is what side you are on. Or what your personality type is.

@zenvelo Thanks.

Alignment is descriptive, not proscriptive.

Neutral Evil people, in the game, tend to worship gods that favor Neutral Evil traits. Lawful Good gods tend to favor people who act within the Lawful Good alignment.

If your actions change in D&D, your alignment changes, and that will affect whether your gods still favor you (with spells, wishes, answer to prayers, etc.) For instance, a Lawful-Good Paladin who tortures a criminal for information will lose their alignment, their spells, and their class, and be dropped to regular old Fighter.

Whatever floats your boat man, just don’t attack and bother other people with it.

@Sneki95 Good advice . Thanks. GA.

For mercy sake! D&D is a game. It is meant to be played with other people. It was not intended as a religious experience. Put away the D&D, get out into the real world and go to church, where you will have a chance of meeting people.

If you play D&D, go to church, it comes down to what you ultimately are seeking to gain or find, which is?

@Hypocrisy_Central Structured growth.

^ In what area or how so?

@Hypocrisy_Central I’m not sure. I don’t know how to quantify personal success.

@RedDeerGuy1 I’m not sure. I don’t know how to quantify personal success.
To me structured growth and personal success are two different animals. Personal success I would guess is when you reach certain personal benchmarks. If you set a goal to do this or that, and you achieve it through applying effort or working a plan the it was successful.

I’ve always hated the concept of alignment in Dungeons and Dragons and saw it as an artificial constraint on role playing. It’s one of the many reasons why we gave up the game and switched to D20 Modern, which is the same gaming system (3.5) as the D&D we were playing, but has no alignment restrictions.

Alignment is useful, in my opinion, for certain classes. Clerics, Paladins, and Druids all rely on deities for their magic. If you act in such a way that it pisses off your deity, they’re likely to punish you by taking away your powers.

Now, punishing a rogue for being too nice on occasion is stupid.

@Seek But you don’t necessarily need alignment for that. You know the characteristics of your deity, and it’s up to the GMs discretion whether or not whether your keep to that.

Druid alignments are particularly vexing. Druids are required by 3.5 and earlier D&D rules (not sure of version 4 or 5 as I don’t play them), to be “neutral” of some ilk. Neutral good, neutral evil, lawful neutral, true neutral, whatever. So, if you’re neutral good, and you do something “lawful”, does that mean that you have to do something “chaotic” to balance it out and you get punished if you don’t?

And don’t get me started on alignment language. I’m glad that got thrown out.

No… it means you’re supposed to be levelheaded, and do what is most reasonable at the time. But I am willing to drop the subject if you don’t want to discuss it.

As always, I refer everyone to the first page of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, where Gary Gygax himself admonishes people to never let the rules interfere with your gameplay.

Well, obviously I want to discuss it because I answered the question.

If alignment is “Just a suggestion” then I am more fine with it. I don’t know if you ever played the Star Wars d20 modern system, but I think they have it right. There is no alignment, but everybody is assumed to start off as “good” or part of the forces of light. If you do something “evil” (like killing a defenseless person, even if the defenseless person is an enemy) then you get a “Dark side point”. You gather enough dark side points and you turn into someone who supports the dark side.

What I don’t like is the grid of nine, divided into law, neutral, chaos, good, neutral evil. Good people sometimes do evil things, and evil people sometimes do selflessly good things. A good role player knows the limitation of their character and will play within the boundaries of his personality.

My wife is actually better at that than I am. I have a tendency to default to my native personality. My wife, however, can completely change her personality. Once, years ago, she was playing a character who was secretly working for whatever enemy we were facing, and she killed my character in a battle. I was pissed.

It was the “don’t get me started” that led to that sentence.

I have never played Star Wars D20, but I will say right now that that sort of false dichotomy is utterly distasteful to me. Han Solo did a shitload of “evil things” and didn’t support the Dark Side. He’s classic Chaotic Neutral. Fuck the law, I do what’s right for me unless I have a good reason to do otherwise.

And yeah, in D&D all of the rules are suggestions. Gygax built a sandbox, provided a few toys, and suggested everyone go have some fun however they like to.

It’s players who made the rules “rules”. Any good DM will tell the players which books apply, which rules apply, and which don’t.

Oh, that was just a figure of speech in regards to alignment language. It sounds like we are in agreement. You seem like someone who would be fun to play a game with. My wife and I are the only women in our group. We try to get our daughter interested but she just rolls her eyes.