Greg is a lot smarter than me, but I'll chip in an additional helpful point of consideration for moral characters. The *Book Of Exalted Deeds* is an official DnD book that dissects the "Good" alignment for 197 pages. It's most poignant section is "On Mercy," accompanied by a paladin pointing their sword at a pair defenseless tieflings. Said paladin is explained to have two core values: honoring love, and destroying evil. Hence, they are in a moral conundrum because the tieflings are clearly lovers. The takeaway here is that good roleplay comes from challenging the core values of a character. The DM should try to nudge their players into ethical dilemmas and encourage debate over what to do. Star Trek stories often did this, and I'm sure Greg is already ahead of me here since he cited the Firengi vs Klingon comparison. Those species scoff at human standards of morality, but they are not amoral themselves. Rather, they have their OWN systems of morality, and being able to get into their headspace is how the Enterprise crew defuses conflict and outwit them. Bottom line: if you're a DM, try subjecting the asshole Paladin to an ethic challenge. If you're a fellow party member, treat the asshole Paladin like a Star Trek alien.
Funny that you at you've a harder time being good, and I've a harder time being bad, unless I'm being super -ing manipulative. I usually aim for neutrality, but most of my characters end up being genuinely good people. I one time played the Lawful Stupid Paladin, but mine was actually Lawful Evil. His path through life as an Oath of Conquest actually ended up being his downfall, because the party had a lot of very strong personalities. I loved watching him break himself on the group multiple times until our Storm domain Cleric finally made him break his oath. She convinced him to submit willingly by playing up the emotional impact of his constant strife with the party. Two sessions later he was an Oath of Redemption Paladin. And he actually started actively deescalating situations to avoid combat and more or less adopted a group of bandits to try to set them straight. This, of course, was a long campaign (lvl 1 - lvl 17) and a lot of these things were talked about above game. I made him specifically to be redeemed because one of our players was new and I wanted to show what I liked most about TTRPGs-- good roleplay and deep characters. It was a lot of fun.
I was playing a game with the Lawful Good paladin... AS said paladin. Gold armor, hammer that glows with the light of the Sun, the whole thing. There was no one explicitly evil in the party, but the Bard and Ranger definitely had their own agendas, so as the Lawful Good guy who followed the god Iomedae, most of the decisions that I made revolved around me actually quoting one of the 14 "ways" Iomedae would expect a paladin to behave. And the good thing was that it was often up to interpretation. For example, the Bard and the Ranger are trying to break into an orphanage... because the Ranger has seen no children come in or out of it, and they suspect that a villain (something about spreading a horrible disease) is hiding there. Most Paladins would stop at "break into an orphanage", My paladin instead quoted: "I will guard the honor of my fellows, both thought and deed, and I will have faith in them." In short, he chose to believe in his less-than-stellar allies because he felt it was the better course of action. Good is not who can be the biggest stick in the mud. Good is what you can do with the tools you're given.
I think the most fun way to play 'good' characters is by making them villainous. My friend made a setting where magical creatures like elves are closer to their folklore of being magical tricksters, and I made a Zealot character that while claiming to be good, would also execute prisoners and act like a haughty asshole. I think a very important aspect is moulding your character to fit the party, for instance I would say 'I'm going to kill the prisoner, does any other character try to stop me?' and would have a small scene where I eventually concede. That way I stay true to my character, and they don't lose the setpiece they want. By the way, I'm really enjoying these character analysis videos
I really like these DnD explanations. I've been playing a Cthulhu mythos TTRPG, my first ever, and going forward and possibly branching into other games I like hearing examples and stories like this.
The first time I played a Paladin it was in a Pathfinder 1.0 game with a homebrew world where all major nations outlawed religion of any kind. My character had only been taught faith from his parents in secret before they died. We didn't use alignment in any strict structured way. But my Paladin was broadly lawful good, or rather he wanted to be lawful good, but couldn't find a law he totally agreed with and that didn't want to execute him. So it was a really fun for to have this character trying to figure out what his morals in pretty bleak and hopeless world were. One time that meant beating up the street thugs trying extort the blacksmith for "protection" money, another time that meant stopping the party from executing an NPC our bard had used "Dominate Person" on. This NPC had done nothing to us, he wasn't even the target of the spell, he had just gotten caught up in it because his mother had gotten possessed by a demon. They mostly wanted to kill him so he wouldn't expose us as spellcasters and priests in the steampunk technocracy that hated magic. But I was like "Guys we can't just kill him in cold blood like this" and the bard was like "Its not in cold blood...wait is it?" "Yes it is!" I had to explain. Another time it was making sure the party didn't immediately attack the group barbarian npcs we came upon. Instead we talked to them, were polite and my character was gifted a necklace that let me transform into a vole or a fink once per day. So my Paladin's "Law" became, don't immediately kill people were unsure about, but if they do attack us we can kill them. I would really like to try to play a lawful good Paladin in a more typical setting at some point.
I don't comment often, but you have inspired me to write about a character that I created that is somewhat of a SUBVERSION of the "lawful stupid" character in my humble opinion. Imagine if you will a tabaxi rogue. He is what you would call a thief, but he would not call himself a thief. Not in the technical and self-serving way of "I just RELOCATE the gold into my pocket that people don't notice". NO, he TRULY doesn't think of himself as a thief. he's meant to be a foreigner from a remote island where his society of Tabaxi do not have a concept of property ownership, only the balance of "take". Effectively, the Tabaxi of his society live in tribes and "take" what they need from one another with the shared assumption that that person is taking it for a good reason, and will eventually benefit the good of the tribe. People will realize an asshole quickly of course, which is why the people of the tribe respect the "take", they learn as childeren that when they *squander* those resources for themselves, the tribe suffers. So in effect, he is a rogue that doesn't understand the concept of stealing, and instead "takes' what he feels the tribe needs, be it food or magic items or small unguarded children who have vital information that could lead to the downfall of the oppressively local lord... and may in fact be their child... I would call him, "Chaotic Stupid" if I had to use a naming convention like "Lawful stupid". He LITERALLY doesn't know the laws, and manages not to get caught, so without consequences he believes he is a good person, and takes only what he feels the "tribe" needs.
I'd honestly place that character definitively in the good alignment. His actions are actively being done in service to others rather than himself, which what "good" means in D&D. Whether he's CG or NG depends on whether or not he follows other rules that he recognizes as important, and he could even be seen as a subsect of LG if the character has a personal code or belief that it is their _obligation_ to do these things in service of others, and always does so with specific purpose or intent behind the decision.
Funnily enough, the lawful good paladin in my last campaign was the edgy loner rogue’s father. (He was a side character though, not a player.) His dedication to fighting evil and protecting the greater good meant that he ended up neglecting his family for months at a time - thus, his wife became bitter and indifferent, his oldest son became angry and resentful, his youngest son became an anxiety-ridden mess, and his daughter became a pathological people pleaser to try to reign in the other three.
I ended up making a brilliant Stupid Good paladin by accident. The trick is to not start the campaign as good but aim to end the campaign as good and intentionally start much further down the ladder turning the whole story into a redemption arc for your character. It was my first long campaign and I didn't really understand paladins initially (took me a good chunk of time to finally understand the joy of smite) but I didnt do a big backstory and I played her as cranky, confrontationally and generally as a character who had lost most of her faith at the start of the campaign, I'm not a religious person myself so initially I didnt think I could do a 'holy character'. But when we ended up in Avernus and she came face to face with the D&D equivalent of hell and found herself in a temple to her god in a ruined city, I thought to do a bit of roleplaying flourish and asked if I could say a prayer to my god and I did a sort of Conan the barbarian style prayer to torm and the dm liked it so much he rewarded me with a shiny +1 sword. Which set me off on the path of Pearl relearning her faith and embracing her holy role. So it was a campaign where she was chaotic good almost chaotic neutral at the start and it dovetailed nicely with both the avernus storyline and the homebrew stuff the dm threw in and other players story as Pearl became holier and more a force for Good she assumed a leadership role in the party and it paralleled some other players who fell to darkness which led to some nice interparty conflicts and a whole dramatic sidequest involving a player's soul, tiamat and Arkan (a storyline that pretty much ended with Pearl making an oath to kill all of Tiamats followers) So by the end of the campaign with her faith restored Pearl was lawfully Good, but it was the end goal and certain less stick in the mud traits (like her sense of humour and her intense intimidation abilities) were traits she brought from her less then holy days but now used for the glory of Torm and the protection of all.
I'm currently playing a goodie goodie. My character's a high level healer who acts kinda like the mom of the group. She'll try to settle things nonviolently as much as possible, only resorting to violence if the opponent can't be reasoned with, but she'll heal enemies if they concede before other party members kill them.
first off, i am glad to see you making videos again. there use to be arguements at my table over alignment, mostly i just got rid of it because its not a useful mechanic and it just makes players upset. however, it does still technically exist because things like tieflings and aasimar exist and so demons, devils, angels and whatever probably exist. for this specific instance, i explain that those creatures are a form of elemental. there are "lawful" or "good" or "evil" elements just as there is fire, water, etc. asking an angel to be evil would be like asking a volcano to spew room temperature coffee. sure, its not impossible to force that onto a volcano, but it stops being a volcano and is now just coffee mountain. an angel becomes a devil and these things are fluid in that way. the example you talk about, deities and their relation to alignment, i somewhat handle like warlocks getting power from an unknowable patron. a god could be good or whatever, but, all they care about is you are serving them. one example from many of the D&D settines is Corellon, God of Elves; he hates orcs and says its ok to kill orc babies because orcs are always evil for him. Corellon is a chaotic good deity, but killing children is usually the chaotic evil example (burning an orphanage). most deities probably dont care what you are doing most of the time.
Hey Greg, I think I've been watching your videos for something like a decade now, and I just want to say I watch you for your interesting insights into things. I feel like you've got a really analytical mind, and could do a really good job breaking down how to play TTRPGs well. Because of that, these recent videos have been awesome. All I want to say is I know that these videos aren't doing amazingly for you, and I just want to be encouraging. I love how creative your "We Will NOT Play D&D" videos are, but underneath that I find the characters so interesting because they make me think of how to roleplay well. You seem to have a really good grasp of how to improv in a way that's fun for everyone, but you also have the ability to explain the nuts and bolts of why these are good practices. Your grounding video put into words what I've failed to describe to my fellow players time and time again. I don't get this from other "How to Play D&D" videos. I guess, what I'm saying here is I remember how quickly the Slick Sam project rose and died because you got discouraged by how well it was doing, and I'd hate to see the same thing happen again. Please don't take this as me badgering you for more and more of your time, you've already given years of your life. What I'm really trying to say is you're an interesting guy with interesting ideas and I love to hear them.
I think it’s important to have an idea of roughly where your character is going to end up by the end if you’re playing a long-term campaign. That way you can have the DM present challenges to your character’s current morals and beliefs to nudge them in the direction you want. Of course, that isn’t to say you shouldn’t leave some wiggle room for the character to surprise you.
When I made my LG Aasimar Sorc in a Decent into Avernus game, I literally made him with the express intent of either being the beacon of light in the darkness, or being corrupted and falling in a similar manner to Zariel before him. One of the biggest inter-party conflicts that arose as a result was a debate over whether or not to free damned souls from their eternal torment for their treason and desertion in Zariel's war on the Nine Hells, and has created a really interesting theme of justice vs. mercy in the game that we're planning on exploring more in the future.
Luckily I don't have ever made a Lawful Stupid PG and my last character is a super good and naive goblin and I'm happy about how she turned out. Anyways I find Suuuuuper hard to make evil PCs, they hardly ever fit the campaigns and I turn them good way too fast, I need a way to keep them evil without being annoying to my party
Funny enough, I have the opposite problem. I'm very bad at playing evil characters. Even my evil characters occasionally do good things and care for their party. Some would say that's the sort of evil character you should play as a PC, but also even my BBEGs do good things occasionally. Being bad is hard for me. I can be self-centered, but it's hard not to care about everything else. More often than not I've failed to make BBEGs the party can truly hate and at least once my party has actually decided to join the side of a BBEG. Some might like that more. I'm happy my players enjoy BBEGs who aren't completely evil, but I did once play with a group who completely lost their minds and were pissed at me when they found out the BBEG of the game I was running for them... gave gold to poor towns and struggling orphanages, because when he was younger he lived in a poor town, in a struggling orphanage, and now he had hoards of wealth. They thought showing someone evil could do something good was, and I quote, "akin to saying 'Hitler wasn't completely bad, he liked dogs'". It was very dumb.
My experience was with a 5e Oath of Glory Paladin, which as the subclass explains, is an oath around bettering yourself because you know that you are destined for great things and will need to be ready to face the villains that will make you a hero; things are decided by actions, not words. We can already see where the exploitable flaw is but I'll continue. I was playing a Necromancer. Not a Good™ Necromancer that sees zombies as an untapped workforce, or a typical Necromancer that has an unhealthy obsession with the undead and wants more of them. An evil Necromancer that has been burned enough times in her backstory that while she wants to care about other people, she has trust issues to the point of paranoia, and so really only acts in her self-interest. A runaway that dresses like a ye olde peasantry in order to draw less attention to herself, only practices her magic on those that would do her harm otherwise, and doesn't think anyone would care about her without a motive. Despite my attempts to lay low (though I forgot I initially went with Acid Splash instead of the outright-necrotic Chill Touch for my signature attack and forgot to change it back), the DM himself threw me under the bus by having an enemy Necromancer™ NPC call my character out as a necromancer, just like him despite the fact that he's got a legion of zombies and is decked out in skull tattoos. This, of course, set off the Paladin, who basically went "Give me one good excuse why I shouldn't kill you right now." To which I responded "I haven't done similar to you in all the opportunities that presented themselves. Feel free to judge me once I do something wrong." Which I thought would be good, it's in line with the Paladin's oath and could be a moment of reflection, but it also unfortunately played directly into my character's trauma so I wasn't going to have her push it farther than that. The entire rest of the campaign, sadly, proceeded in a tense manner, with the Paladin making the decisions and throwing shade, me keeping my mouth shut and planning to have my character make a hasty retreat at any time, the Rogue keeping his head down, and the DMPC Barbarian not really getting what the big deal is but not taking a side. Eventually we ran out of module and I finally got a chance to show the one Wizard healing spell that literally hurts the user to do so, but by that point the damage was done and the game was ended. Turns out, the Paladin player had wanted a character arc where someone stands up to the CHA-invested, plate-armored Smite machine with damage resistance 3, as though the party members with single-digit levels should know that PvP wasn't really an option despite how often it was brought up. The DM doesn't want to force people to play "correctly," and both the Rogue and Necromancer aren't going to risk their necks to fight morality with a Paladin. We all agreed it was a mess and we moved on to better campaigns. Finished some Mad Mage with them last week, was nice. Fought a hell-dragon and got promoted to partner with my patron and got married to the barbarian, ranger got to Wish his family back, and the sorcerer got to be an award-winning author.
What. Cain doesn't sacrifice Abel to Yahwee. Cain just kills him out of jealousy. Cain tries to hide it from Yahwee (Am I his keeper?). Cain only gives a burnt offering of vegetables. Lame. Meanwhile Abel gives a ritualistic blood sacrifice + burning the corpse (burnt offering) of one of his animals. Metal. The better analogy would be Jephthah in Judges: 11:32 who does ritualistic blood sacrifice (burnt offering) of his daughter. Jephthah wants to win an upcoming battle but is too weak so he promises ahead of time (pray it forward) that if Yahwee grants him victory then he would sacrifice the first thing that walks out of the door of his home when he gets back. Yahwee apparently likes this as Jephthah gets holy powers like The Doom Slayer and wins several battles. He goes home and his daughter walks out the door.
So uh, it's Abraham that held the knife to his son... We started off strong, but then somehow Able came back to life and snuck an L into poor old Abe's role... So I played a newly minted paladin on a redemption arc, and it didn't last long. My character butted heads with my fellow players and the choices being made by the party... It was very fun for me, but unsustainable. I retired the character because it wouldn't have been true to their very being to keep turning an eye to the rogues antics. The dm and players wanted the character to stay, but it would have turned them into a lie. I think that character was one of the funnest I've ever played, but if I'd kept them then it would have destroyed the good good aspirations of this character by constantly bending on their morality. Being good good is untenable unless you surround yourself with like minded individuals, and as you say that's just not very fun... It's hard and boring. But I say it can be a lot of fun as long as you stay self aware, and are willing/ready to retire said characters if the table cannot/will not work with you on it. It's also unfair to ask others, as players or dm, to accommodate you in this way to keep a certain character. They're doing what they want... But if their character wants what yours does, then we have a chance for fun growth. Eh, idk. Don't let your dreams be dreams, but don't be a dick.
The worst lawful stupid paladin I ever had as a DM was a player who specialized in the mantra that as long as it was self defense (or looked like it) killing people was A ok. This lawful good paladin was more bloodthirsty then the rogue assassin whos whole job is to kill things, The two most egrious examples were when the party was traveling the countryside looking for a place to stay , they were walking on some old farmers land and the farmer was just a grumpy old man who wanted them off his property because these five armed men looked like trouble. The paladin gave him the whole speech as to how he was a warrior of the gods and he was in the right to cut through his land since he was a holy paladin. When the party wouldn't adhear to the old mans several requests he drew a sword sort of as a warning that he seriously wanted him gone. Well this was enough for the paladin to divine smite the old man in the face since according to him thats how "self defense works" he also had previously killed a bandit who tried to surrender and even offered to turn himself in if they spared his life. Eventually i made him a oathbreak for his numerous bloodthirsty ways and when he didnt like that he left the group.
In my current campaign, I'm the only neutral character in a team of good character, but they are constantly executing prisoners. Like, they were trying to get information out of a captured enemy, accidentally killed him, potentially sexually assaulted him, ressed him, and then when they got the info they wanted to kill him again. They want to constantly kill my character's friends because they made the sin of being friends with a tiefling. They threaten to neuter me. The cleric thinks geas is mind control and wanted to use it to force my character into suicide, multiple times. I'm starting to think my character is actually too hard on himself and might be a better person than he realized, just someone who faced a lot of difficult situations and had to make some bad choices in his past. He often tries to defuse situations. He tries to talk people down, properly have them brought in to answer for their crimes rather than being judge, jury an executioner even though this typically leaves him open to be injured by enemies taking advantage of his compassion. Unfortunately, when he really gets going into a fight he can go overboard, so a couple of times he annilated some weaker enemies even though he subdued their other friends just fine. The thing is, I'm the rogue. My poor rogue spends so much of his time trying to discourage all the good members of the party away from doing evil things. I'm pretty sure if someone told them burning down an orphanage would save the world, they would ready that BBQ without even like, double checking to make sure it wasn't a ruse.
I played a LG Pally, homebrew setting so the order worshiped a god the GM made, and the order was controlled by the GM. Played him as a bit of a himbo, always having good intentions but not having very complex ethical views. As a paladin he was obedient to his order, which gave the GM influence if the LG every became a problem. If my pallly was being too stubborn about something someone else from the same faith could just explain things to him and he'd come around. When the druid died she rerolled as a cleric of the same faith who would often explain ethics to the pally. Ended up making it a group that had discussions about ethical philosophy all the time, even mid-fight which was entertaining.
My story about a lawful-stupid paladin: we got into a situation where we *could* destroy NUMEROUS tiny enemies. We just had to kill them in their sleep. Paladin refused, and he woke them up. The party escaped and trapped him in the room with the enemies. He was eaten alive, and no one cared except the guy playing the paladin.
When I play lawful or good good characters I usually give my characters levels of which they can tolerate evil acts. What can or cant they do with their morality is the challenge I love to give my characters. I also play with a crowd that likes writing characters in scenarios as much as playing the game so we read alot of our universe lore before writing our characters. If enough nonmoral acts happen, I'm not afraid to have my characters abandon the party and write a new one.
Ok so actually my favorite character I’ve played was a Cleric that acted like that moral center diplomatic good guy type, but was actually secretly working towards evil ends. It was so very fun and the heel turn where he betrayed that party had everyone hollering. I think in a worse game it could’ve ruined things but we ALL loved it
People _really_ underestimate the value of playing Evil characters that understand the importance of doing good actions simply because it can help mask their true intentions, further servicing their own personal and selfish goals. Most players who pick Evil characters, especially inexperienced players, just want to be a dick to the other party members, and fail to recognize that for a party to function as a dynamic, they all need to want to do the same things, regardless of their reasoning. If the party is tasked with saving an innocent hostage, then the evil character kills that hostage, you're not "playing your alignment," you're actively creating a narrative issue where the party now has little to no reason to trust your character or want to continue adventuring with them. But an evil character that helps save the hostage to gain the fame and power that an adventuring party earns over time, only to betray the party when the time is right to reveal their goals and machinations to the world? THAT creates a memorable experience, because as far as the rest of the party is concerned, you'd been helping them make the world a better place. It helps if you sprinkle in foreshadowing early on, and get a little more heavy-handed with it before the reveal, but all the same, it can lead to some of the most interesting moments in TTRPGs.
So fun fact about the binding of Isaac episode : A few Jewish interpretations are based around the idea that God WANTED Abraham to disobey, to refuse what was clearly an unjust and hypocritical order, that was his test, and he failed. You know, modern Jews have a problem with blind obediance and people who are just following orders for obvious reasons. But it is possible that it was the original message.
I played as a monk who was basically Forrest Gump everything monk related came so naturally to him but his understanding of the world and morality all came from everything his late wife told him. In the game we were part of the queens personal guard and even though killing people and such was what we were told to do id still scold my party members with my wifes wise words and it lead to the most passionate discussions and arguments id seen in my dnd group mostly between me the chad wife enjoyer and the virgin queen fan.
we killed him and told the player he wasnt allowed to play L/G anymore. in another case, because the player was actually trying to work with us, we hatched a scheme to work with devil summoning evil accomplice for the ends of stopping her much more evil mom by giving the paladin something to do that would take him and a couple other members of the team away from the situation for a couple in-game days. (we used compressed time by not really rollplaying or dice rolling much to get that part done quickly so he didnt have to sit with his thumb up his butt while we played without him.)
I did a bleeding heart healer once in a sorta Lovecraft setting in a pathfinder game once On paper I was a asamare bard, But in the game I was a 2 hundred year old man, cursed with an extended life. A seasoned individual who felt the crushing weight of the world, and long past his prime. Shyed away from the scociaty that hated him for his void touched appearance. Using his military knowledge and serums of his own concoction and essence, he practiced as a back alley doctor. Healing the poor and ill that found their way to him. Pulled into a twisted adventure filled with the undead and things better left forgotten. He died as the child that he so desperately tried to protect, ate his soul
After that I played a gunslinging goblin Pew pew Was all too happy to murder and destroy And enjoyed being with his friends Battered and broken, he was behead by the paladin The games came to a quiet and ungraceful ending after that
I remember the one time I did play DND with some friends, I didn’t really know too much about what I was doing or what my character really was other than he was a dragonborn, so I ended up being as chaotic as possible, picking fights with everybody! Even one of the other players had to literally hose my character down just to get me to chill.
So long as it's more often in service to the party rather than in detriment to them, chaotic party members are great! They allow for fun and unexpected moments to arise and don't really have a code to follow so just do whatever they feel like in the moment. The best way to play chaotic, I find, is to still do what you want, but value the opinions of your friends/party members. Like, sure, it would be SUPER fun to start another tavern brawl right now... but the bard was really miffed that I ruined his show with the last one and the rest weren't super keen with being kicked out onto the streets at night, so how about I... start an arm wrestling contest instead! Then if things just _happen_ to get heated, we can take the fight outside! Perfect!
I subscribed for funny cartoons, guess that's over with. Thanks for the memories, the most romantic MLP/Batman crossover with monkeys, and the wonderful Lovecraftian horror... With ponies. I'm a little sad, but if we have good things all the time how would we know that they were awesome to begin with?
i think its funny that my paladin is statwise stupid but i decided a while ago that someone needs to be breaking the law and ping as evil for her to smite them, and works in a grey area when it comes to undead because she is an undead rights activist
Playing that sort of character requires everyone to be on board. I played a paladin-type and one of the people in my party was of a homebrew race who had to drain the blood of a specific type of npcs, who did not want to get drained. Needless to say my involvement in that party was short lived.
The "my party is always just going to ignore me and kill people for no reason" thing is what really makes playing a good person nearly impossible without the whole group doing it. Even if they agree to it initially, they will usually renege within a session or two the second that violence is slightly more convenient or expedient than being good. That's not saying violence is never the answer, just that people will use it when it is wholly unnecessary because the non-murder route takes slightly more time or effort. It's hard to justify a good person sticking around with the average party for any reason other than trying to restrain their violent tendencies, which you will pretty much always fail to do and be a buzzkill for even attempting. A lot of people treat the game as just an opportunity to be a violent lunatic, or only ever want to take route that requires the least thought or effort (usually brute force), or act like it's a video game where there shouldn't be any real consequences for anything you do. It's very unfortunate.
If you do not mind, I am going to expound on a bit of traditional Catholic theology. Being lawful has little to nothing about being good. Being lawful is only about what is permitted by a government or kingdom that is in power! If a governing body decides that one should always hold the hand of a old woman is she crosses the street then that is lawful. Conversely a government could state that stopping the murder of a select group of people impedes the rights of others to take that life, then that is also lawful! Both of these choices we can probably agree are on the good or evil spectrum, but that does not impact if they are lawful or unlawful. I would say that the current alignment system is a fundamentally flawed understanding of moral theology and philosophy at best and pigeon holes characters into be utilitarian in their decisions.
I reaaally feel like the people playing D&D are just crazy at this point... In my table we never had a player killing people for the fun of it! Sure there are some violence incidents here and there, but it was always for a good reason, and mostly on self defence! Heck sometimes players will try getting their enemies to surrender or get them to flee after a few takedowns, a lot is done with interpretation and making tough decisions, instead of just beating their way to victory!
One of the things we talked about in the chat is that sometimes "good" is easy if the setting sets you up with objectively bad enemies. Like Oprimus Prime is a "good" character, but it's easy for him to be good when Megatron is a huge dork-ass villain all the time. He doesn't have to weigh many options or balance very many needs, because usually stopping Megatron is the most clear-cut way to help everybody. It gets very tricky to play a "good" character if the two sides of a conflict are two well-rounded factions of people with legitimate bones to pick, because the clarity of what is "good" becomes muddy, and if you passively choose one side because they spoke to you first or something, you're not very actively making a proactive impact. In my experience, I've known a lot of players to be passively "good-ish", but I find those players will also go along with tremendously evil plans and even stand against justice if you make the conflict complicated enough. It's just that those games become really frustrating for those players too, as it's not usually what they signed up for.
@@Dawnsomewhere It's actually fairly easy to play a "good" character in a grey world. Anyone can self-flagellate after picking the lesser of two evils. What's hard is to play a "good" character in a crowd of Jokers.
@@Dawnsomewhere Honestly, in a conflict with two sides justified in their fight, a good character will likely see the fight as not something to be won by either side, but stopped altogether through either diplomatic means, or fixing the problems that caused the conflict in the first place, in order to save as many innocent lives as possible in the process. One of the campaigns I'm playing in has two sides in conflict, humans and fey. The setting presumes the players are on the side of the humans, and initially paints the fey as wanting to eliminate humanity. But as the story unfolds, it is revealed that the human civilizations were founded through colonization and war of the fey land, and that the fey are technically in the right for defending themselves when the war began. But that was hundreds of years in the past, and though that may be no time at all to the fey, the humans that live now are several generations detached from the initial conflict, and are now solely fighting out of self preservation, rather than some righteous conquest. As such, for good characters, the focus of the campaign shifts from winning the war for either side, to stopping the conflict altogether and brokering a peace between the two sides.
In conversations like this, I have a saying I always tend to pull out; "alignments should be descriptive, not _prescriptive._" If you're basing a character's entire personality on one of nine very narrow, extremely vague moralities, you're not going to get a fleshed out character, you're going to get a stereotype. It'd be like taking one of the Meyer Briggs personalities and making a character based entire on that with no deviation, it's no better than making a trope character. Which, I should clarify, is not necessarily a _bad_ thing, but it becomes unnecessarily restrictive in games where alignment only really serves to inform a character's morality. But it should also pointed out that personality and morals can change over time. Just like someone's Meyer Briggs evaluation can changes based on the point in their life that they take it, so too can a character's alignment change though their actions and development through the narrative of the game. Another really interesting is the way D&D specifically defined morality. Because quite honestly, no singular alignment is entirely in the "right." Good is simply a character's capacity to do things for other people, while Evil is their capacity to act in their own self-interest. Lawful is one dictated by laws or a code of conduct, while chaotic is one who acts on instinct, seeing rules more as restrictions. Using a quick comparison, what would each alignment's typical reasons be to kill a dragon? A typical good person would see the terror and destruction it's causing others and be spurred into action, a typical evil character would see the inevitable fame and glory that awaits them, a typically lawful character may see the dragon as being diametrically opposed to their virtues, and a typically chaotic character would see the dragon and fight it because it's a FUCKING DRAGON, come on, this will be awesome! At the end of the day, the actions these characters take are still a universal good for the area the dragon is laying waste to, but the mentality and reasons the characters take inform their alignment. So honestly, when someone wants to play a character who is a, "good person", I always try to steer them away from Lawful Good, as that is a character that sees their own code as the means by which they help others. It's significantly restrictive, and if done without serious thought put into it, leads to a more authoritarian character than a genuinely good one. If anything, I tend to push True Neutral as the healthiest mindset. It means you value everyone; you aren't constantly sacrificing yourself for others, but you're not a selfish individual either. It means you understand some laws exist to keep people safe, but you aren't beholden to the ones that actively hurt people for the benefit of others. It's the alignment I almost always tell people to start with to get a feel for their character, and if they play them in a way that leans organically towards one of the alignments, _then_ we change the alignment to match. This being said, I do not think Lawful Good is impossible to play in a way that is both fun for the table and yourself. In fact, when one of my friends started a Decent into Avernus game, I made it my goal to show the actual depths of how interesting Lawful Good can be when done right. To do so, I took advantage of one little fact, a tidbit most overlook when making Lawful characters. You see, Lawful isn't some random need to follow every laws the individual comes across, to do so would inevitably lead to paradoxical situations where the law of one land specifically prohibits something a character's religion states is mandatory of its followers. A Lawful character is simply one that holds themselves to their own code of laws. Maybe they're a soldier following their code of conduct to a T, maybe they're a devil who only follows the terms of their contracts, or maybe they're a priest who follows the teachings of their god and shares it with others. The real kicker to the latter? Most D&D settings observe a pantheon, and that basically gives you an entire selections of codes to follow for drastically different Lawful characters. Thus, I created a Lawful Good Aasimar, a Divine Soul Sorcerer who has a direct ancestral tie to Lliira, The Joybringer, who values bringing happiness and freedom to others. His entire code effectively _compels_ him to action when he sees people miserable, taking the most immediate course of action to brighten someone's day and, if that doesn't work, finding the root of the problem and finding a way to resolve it. Thus-far, he has spent a revivify diamond to save a child whose sibling was saved to ensure they wouldn't be miserable and STILL felt sorry that he couldn't do the same for the mother who was also slain, slept with a literal succubus who promised to help him and his friends in return, and released an entire squadron in the hells from eternal torment, a punishment for betraying their comrades through desertion, instead offering them freedom, kindness, and a path towards redemption by asking them to help others in dire need. Especially telling in this regard is the fact that he is _constantly butting heads_ with another Lawful PC, an extremely pragmatic knight who follows her own slightly tweaked code of chivalry.
I never dvelve deep into DnD, but does alignment means you can be paladin of a battle hungry god and claim you can't be paladin due to alignment restrictions if you don't resolve every problem as violently as possible or not challenge every shopkeep you meet to a duel to obtain items?
In earlier editions of DnD - yes! Your powers came from your god, so if you didn't uphold your god's values, you'd lose those powers. Paladins were one of the stronger classes in the game because they got to do both magically-infused damage and healing, and the only drawback was that you had to adhere to a fictional code of ethics which would almost definitely not be well-expanded on. In 5th edition, these are no longer god powers, but are instead "oath" powers, and you can only keep your abilities if you uphold whatever "oath" is granting them.
Religion in a shallow view of "good and evil" in an RPG can be a detriment, but if you look at what various systems and settings do with it, it can be really interesting. Like, say, Exalts from Exalted. They are the champions of the gods and they are given power to rule over the world. What is right? Whatever the Exalts say. What if Exalts disagree? It's up to them to sort it out, the gods know not to mess with the titan killers they have created. Or you look at the Immaculate Order from the same setting. They are highly qualified monks that travel the world upholding the laws and fixing problems. They don't have any deity to answer to, only their fellow monks. They have a high degree of autonomy since they are often months journey away from home, so it's up to them to improve the world around them, learn what it means to follow the teachings, and every now and then report on what they have been up to. If you need to kill a village because they started doing a peasant uprising around a false god, well, sometimes that needs to happen, and as long as you can justify it you won't get scorned, just don't make it a habit. Or what do you do when a fallen god offers you endless power with no strings attached, but the caveat being that those powers only make you good at being a murderous tyrant. You don't have to kill, but you are so efficient at it, so why squander your talent... It's a really fun topic to explore when you look past "I'm good therefore what I do must be good too..." tpsrpg.blogspot.com/2022/02/different-takes-on-religions-gods-and.html
1 week later: You said Cain kills Abel in the first story, and later in the second about Abraham & Isaac, "Abel" nearly kills his son? After himself being murdered? I thought you'd misspoken at first, but then a couple minutes later, you did it again. Maybe it was just a Sparklewinker/Sprinklewinker multi-misspeak, but as a gentle admonition from a Christian fan, don't lose your focus in the final editing process.
To be fair most Lawful Stupid characters are arguably LE. They go around bashing anyone over the head that doesn't adhere to their personal philosophy, morality, and justifications. That's rather narcissistic. At which point you just say, I don't allow evil characters in the party, and you've solved your problem.
I made a cleric of innocence in a pathfinder game with a paladin that had this sort of black and white view of the world, where if someone was in their way they were up to be killed. He viewed goodness, genuinely as a person outside of the game, as something that only has merit because it gave people a set of rules to listen to people like him. Like the dude genuinely thought he was this hyper intelligent mastermind of the world. I wish I could say this was resolved by me valiantly outsmarting him. I mean he wasn't my friend or anything so really that would have been the best route for a story. Some spectacular display of my own wit to psychologically defeat him in the field of cunning. But no. He was just a shithead who made games at the comic store unfun for me with sexist and homophobic jabs at me that ended with him getting arrested for loitering around a highschool. All in all, what I guess I'm getting at is, sometimes people really do go around thinking they know everything and they are some patriarchal authority. They do terrible things and logic it's good because they want it. They act like children, but are adults and try and use any power to feel like it, giving them a reason to invade RPGs for their sick fantasies of power which make me a little more misanthropic. And sometimes you have a clown bard best friend who ends up accidently being a moral beacon of empathy and strength and you remember how most people try to be and you get a little hope.
An entire video about how to play a good character without ever really defining what good even means. Morality is subjective. Now I know how to play someone that you would consider good, but that's not very useful is it?
"I am upset because this man only spoke from his own perspective of the world that he holds, and he did not even speak from different perspectives, Wich he does not hold."
Law versus chaos is the dumbest alignment to include. It involves almost no thinking. Player reasoning is shallow and it's just a simplistic way to put jerseys on people. It's not actually "chaos" it's unlawfulness. All the decisions instantly boiled down to am I powerful enough to get my way? No? Then follow the lawful alignment so you don't get your ass kicked. It's a neutral and self-interested culture, What then? Then you do What you want to do? Don't sweat it unless it's going to screw someone directly over. But what about a chaotic culture? They're already going to be about power. That's really it. Boring as hell. Unless you're like playing Warhammer where there is some sort of weird ass stupid magical power magical creatures aligned with subjective concepts of law and chaos. But that's intended to be over the top and dumb. It's quite a lot of fun from what I hear. With good to evil alignment you can ask real questions. Does this preserve me and other people? Does It make life better for more people or less people? Is this going to cause me trouble? Can I get my desires met and do what I want to do to others? What do I want in this situation? What would make other people happy in this situation? What is the most important to me? What is most important to other people? Once your players figure that out then they get to screw with the system. Since they don't care about law versus chaos, just there characters, moral and ethical decisions, then you can have an entire party completely fine with breaking the law in a nasty oppressive society, and combining their efforts to avoid the governments dogs.
My DM resolved the lawful stupid paladin by turning him into an oathbreaker paladin. Honestly, it was a good way to resolve the problem.
I think the oathbreaker gets rewarded way too much since they gain one of the best subclasses in the game
Greg is a lot smarter than me, but I'll chip in an additional helpful point of consideration for moral characters.
The *Book Of Exalted Deeds* is an official DnD book that dissects the "Good" alignment for 197 pages. It's most poignant section is "On Mercy," accompanied by a paladin pointing their sword at a pair defenseless tieflings. Said paladin is explained to have two core values: honoring love, and destroying evil. Hence, they are in a moral conundrum because the tieflings are clearly lovers.
The takeaway here is that good roleplay comes from challenging the core values of a character. The DM should try to nudge their players into ethical dilemmas and encourage debate over what to do.
Star Trek stories often did this, and I'm sure Greg is already ahead of me here since he cited the Firengi vs Klingon comparison. Those species scoff at human standards of morality, but they are not amoral themselves. Rather, they have their OWN systems of morality, and being able to get into their headspace is how the Enterprise crew defuses conflict and outwit them.
Bottom line: if you're a DM, try subjecting the asshole Paladin to an ethic challenge. If you're a fellow party member, treat the asshole Paladin like a Star Trek alien.
Thank you Greg, this is going in my personal bible.
im satisfied
Funny that you at you've a harder time being good, and I've a harder time being bad, unless I'm being super -ing manipulative. I usually aim for neutrality, but most of my characters end up being genuinely good people.
I one time played the Lawful Stupid Paladin, but mine was actually Lawful Evil. His path through life as an Oath of Conquest actually ended up being his downfall, because the party had a lot of very strong personalities. I loved watching him break himself on the group multiple times until our Storm domain Cleric finally made him break his oath. She convinced him to submit willingly by playing up the emotional impact of his constant strife with the party. Two sessions later he was an Oath of Redemption Paladin. And he actually started actively deescalating situations to avoid combat and more or less adopted a group of bandits to try to set them straight.
This, of course, was a long campaign (lvl 1 - lvl 17) and a lot of these things were talked about above game. I made him specifically to be redeemed because one of our players was new and I wanted to show what I liked most about TTRPGs-- good roleplay and deep characters. It was a lot of fun.
Redemption Paladins are great, and I love stories like these!
I was playing a game with the Lawful Good paladin... AS said paladin. Gold armor, hammer that glows with the light of the Sun, the whole thing.
There was no one explicitly evil in the party, but the Bard and Ranger definitely had their own agendas, so as the Lawful Good guy who followed the god Iomedae, most of the decisions that I made revolved around me actually quoting one of the 14 "ways" Iomedae would expect a paladin to behave. And the good thing was that it was often up to interpretation.
For example, the Bard and the Ranger are trying to break into an orphanage... because the Ranger has seen no children come in or out of it, and they suspect that a villain (something about spreading a horrible disease) is hiding there. Most Paladins would stop at "break into an orphanage", My paladin instead quoted: "I will guard the honor of my fellows, both thought and deed, and I will have faith in them." In short, he chose to believe in his less-than-stellar allies because he felt it was the better course of action.
Good is not who can be the biggest stick in the mud. Good is what you can do with the tools you're given.
I think the most fun way to play 'good' characters is by making them villainous. My friend made a setting where magical creatures like elves are closer to their folklore of being magical tricksters, and I made a Zealot character that while claiming to be good, would also execute prisoners and act like a haughty asshole. I think a very important aspect is moulding your character to fit the party, for instance I would say 'I'm going to kill the prisoner, does any other character try to stop me?' and would have a small scene where I eventually concede. That way I stay true to my character, and they don't lose the setpiece they want.
By the way, I'm really enjoying these character analysis videos
I really like these DnD explanations. I've been playing a Cthulhu mythos TTRPG, my first ever, and going forward and possibly branching into other games I like hearing examples and stories like this.
We all could use more Greg in our daily lives
The first time I played a Paladin it was in a Pathfinder 1.0 game with a homebrew world where all major nations outlawed religion of any kind. My character had only been taught faith from his parents in secret before they died. We didn't use alignment in any strict structured way. But my Paladin was broadly lawful good, or rather he wanted to be lawful good, but couldn't find a law he totally agreed with and that didn't want to execute him. So it was a really fun for to have this character trying to figure out what his morals in pretty bleak and hopeless world were. One time that meant beating up the street thugs trying extort the blacksmith for "protection" money, another time that meant stopping the party from executing an NPC our bard had used "Dominate Person" on. This NPC had done nothing to us, he wasn't even the target of the spell, he had just gotten caught up in it because his mother had gotten possessed by a demon. They mostly wanted to kill him so he wouldn't expose us as spellcasters and priests in the steampunk technocracy that hated magic. But I was like "Guys we can't just kill him in cold blood like this" and the bard was like "Its not in cold blood...wait is it?" "Yes it is!" I had to explain. Another time it was making sure the party didn't immediately attack the group barbarian npcs we came upon. Instead we talked to them, were polite and my character was gifted a necklace that let me transform into a vole or a fink once per day. So my Paladin's "Law" became, don't immediately kill people were unsure about, but if they do attack us we can kill them. I would really like to try to play a lawful good Paladin in a more typical setting at some point.
I don't comment often, but you have inspired me to write about a character that I created that is somewhat of a SUBVERSION of the "lawful stupid" character in my humble opinion.
Imagine if you will a tabaxi rogue. He is what you would call a thief, but he would not call himself a thief. Not in the technical and self-serving way of "I just RELOCATE the gold into my pocket that people don't notice". NO, he TRULY doesn't think of himself as a thief. he's meant to be a foreigner from a remote island where his society of Tabaxi do not have a concept of property ownership, only the balance of "take". Effectively, the Tabaxi of his society live in tribes and "take" what they need from one another with the shared assumption that that person is taking it for a good reason, and will eventually benefit the good of the tribe. People will realize an asshole quickly of course, which is why the people of the tribe respect the "take", they learn as childeren that when they *squander* those resources for themselves, the tribe suffers.
So in effect, he is a rogue that doesn't understand the concept of stealing, and instead "takes' what he feels the tribe needs, be it food or magic items or small unguarded children who have vital information that could lead to the downfall of the oppressively local lord... and may in fact be their child...
I would call him, "Chaotic Stupid" if I had to use a naming convention like "Lawful stupid". He LITERALLY doesn't know the laws, and manages not to get caught, so without consequences he believes he is a good person, and takes only what he feels the "tribe" needs.
I'd honestly place that character definitively in the good alignment. His actions are actively being done in service to others rather than himself, which what "good" means in D&D. Whether he's CG or NG depends on whether or not he follows other rules that he recognizes as important, and he could even be seen as a subsect of LG if the character has a personal code or belief that it is their _obligation_ to do these things in service of others, and always does so with specific purpose or intent behind the decision.
Funnily enough, the lawful good paladin in my last campaign was the edgy loner rogue’s father. (He was a side character though, not a player.) His dedication to fighting evil and protecting the greater good meant that he ended up neglecting his family for months at a time - thus, his wife became bitter and indifferent, his oldest son became angry and resentful, his youngest son became an anxiety-ridden mess, and his daughter became a pathological people pleaser to try to reign in the other three.
I ended up making a brilliant Stupid Good paladin by accident. The trick is to not start the campaign as good but aim to end the campaign as good and intentionally start much further down the ladder turning the whole story into a redemption arc for your character. It was my first long campaign and I didn't really understand paladins initially (took me a good chunk of time to finally understand the joy of smite) but I didnt do a big backstory and I played her as cranky, confrontationally and generally as a character who had lost most of her faith at the start of the campaign, I'm not a religious person myself so initially I didnt think I could do a 'holy character'. But when we ended up in Avernus and she came face to face with the D&D equivalent of hell and found herself in a temple to her god in a ruined city, I thought to do a bit of roleplaying flourish and asked if I could say a prayer to my god and I did a sort of Conan the barbarian style prayer to torm and the dm liked it so much he rewarded me with a shiny +1 sword. Which set me off on the path of Pearl relearning her faith and embracing her holy role. So it was a campaign where she was chaotic good almost chaotic neutral at the start and it dovetailed nicely with both the avernus storyline and the homebrew stuff the dm threw in and other players story as Pearl became holier and more a force for Good she assumed a leadership role in the party and it paralleled some other players who fell to darkness which led to some nice interparty conflicts and a whole dramatic sidequest involving a player's soul, tiamat and Arkan (a storyline that pretty much ended with Pearl making an oath to kill all of Tiamats followers) So by the end of the campaign with her faith restored Pearl was lawfully Good, but it was the end goal and certain less stick in the mud traits (like her sense of humour and her intense intimidation abilities) were traits she brought from her less then holy days but now used for the glory of Torm and the protection of all.
I'm currently playing a goodie goodie.
My character's a high level healer who acts kinda like the mom of the group. She'll try to settle things nonviolently as much as possible, only resorting to violence if the opponent can't be reasoned with, but she'll heal enemies if they concede before other party members kill them.
Cain didn't try to play off Abel's death as a sacrifice. he just did it and then attempted to play dumb when God showed up asking questions.
first off, i am glad to see you making videos again.
there use to be arguements at my table over alignment, mostly i just got rid of it because its not a useful mechanic and it just makes players upset. however, it does still technically exist because things like tieflings and aasimar exist and so demons, devils, angels and whatever probably exist. for this specific instance, i explain that those creatures are a form of elemental. there are "lawful" or "good" or "evil" elements just as there is fire, water, etc. asking an angel to be evil would be like asking a volcano to spew room temperature coffee. sure, its not impossible to force that onto a volcano, but it stops being a volcano and is now just coffee mountain. an angel becomes a devil and these things are fluid in that way.
the example you talk about, deities and their relation to alignment, i somewhat handle like warlocks getting power from an unknowable patron. a god could be good or whatever, but, all they care about is you are serving them. one example from many of the D&D settines is Corellon, God of Elves; he hates orcs and says its ok to kill orc babies because orcs are always evil for him. Corellon is a chaotic good deity, but killing children is usually the chaotic evil example (burning an orphanage). most deities probably dont care what you are doing most of the time.
Hey Greg, I think I've been watching your videos for something like a decade now, and I just want to say I watch you for your interesting insights into things. I feel like you've got a really analytical mind, and could do a really good job breaking down how to play TTRPGs well. Because of that, these recent videos have been awesome.
All I want to say is I know that these videos aren't doing amazingly for you, and I just want to be encouraging. I love how creative your "We Will NOT Play D&D" videos are, but underneath that I find the characters so interesting because they make me think of how to roleplay well. You seem to have a really good grasp of how to improv in a way that's fun for everyone, but you also have the ability to explain the nuts and bolts of why these are good practices. Your grounding video put into words what I've failed to describe to my fellow players time and time again. I don't get this from other "How to Play D&D" videos.
I guess, what I'm saying here is I remember how quickly the Slick Sam project rose and died because you got discouraged by how well it was doing, and I'd hate to see the same thing happen again. Please don't take this as me badgering you for more and more of your time, you've already given years of your life. What I'm really trying to say is you're an interesting guy with interesting ideas and I love to hear them.
I think it’s important to have an idea of roughly where your character is going to end up by the end if you’re playing a long-term campaign. That way you can have the DM present challenges to your character’s current morals and beliefs to nudge them in the direction you want.
Of course, that isn’t to say you shouldn’t leave some wiggle room for the character to surprise you.
Have an open ended goal. There's something your character wants to reach, but they're not quite sure how to get there.
@@EmberCitrine Something for your character, but have a goal in mind for you the player as well.
When I made my LG Aasimar Sorc in a Decent into Avernus game, I literally made him with the express intent of either being the beacon of light in the darkness, or being corrupted and falling in a similar manner to Zariel before him. One of the biggest inter-party conflicts that arose as a result was a debate over whether or not to free damned souls from their eternal torment for their treason and desertion in Zariel's war on the Nine Hells, and has created a really interesting theme of justice vs. mercy in the game that we're planning on exploring more in the future.
Most player characters don't even have alignments, because they put no thought into it, they are just 'unaligned' like beasts.
Luckily I don't have ever made a Lawful Stupid PG and my last character is a super good and naive goblin and I'm happy about how she turned out.
Anyways I find Suuuuuper hard to make evil PCs, they hardly ever fit the campaigns and I turn them good way too fast, I need a way to keep them evil without being annoying to my party
Funny enough, I have the opposite problem. I'm very bad at playing evil characters. Even my evil characters occasionally do good things and care for their party. Some would say that's the sort of evil character you should play as a PC, but also even my BBEGs do good things occasionally. Being bad is hard for me. I can be self-centered, but it's hard not to care about everything else. More often than not I've failed to make BBEGs the party can truly hate and at least once my party has actually decided to join the side of a BBEG. Some might like that more. I'm happy my players enjoy BBEGs who aren't completely evil, but I did once play with a group who completely lost their minds and were pissed at me when they found out the BBEG of the game I was running for them... gave gold to poor towns and struggling orphanages, because when he was younger he lived in a poor town, in a struggling orphanage, and now he had hoards of wealth. They thought showing someone evil could do something good was, and I quote, "akin to saying 'Hitler wasn't completely bad, he liked dogs'". It was very dumb.
We call that "adding nuance to a character."
My experience was with a 5e Oath of Glory Paladin, which as the subclass explains, is an oath around bettering yourself because you know that you are destined for great things and will need to be ready to face the villains that will make you a hero; things are decided by actions, not words. We can already see where the exploitable flaw is but I'll continue.
I was playing a Necromancer. Not a Good™ Necromancer that sees zombies as an untapped workforce, or a typical Necromancer that has an unhealthy obsession with the undead and wants more of them. An evil Necromancer that has been burned enough times in her backstory that while she wants to care about other people, she has trust issues to the point of paranoia, and so really only acts in her self-interest. A runaway that dresses like a ye olde peasantry in order to draw less attention to herself, only practices her magic on those that would do her harm otherwise, and doesn't think anyone would care about her without a motive.
Despite my attempts to lay low (though I forgot I initially went with Acid Splash instead of the outright-necrotic Chill Touch for my signature attack and forgot to change it back), the DM himself threw me under the bus by having an enemy Necromancer™ NPC call my character out as a necromancer, just like him despite the fact that he's got a legion of zombies and is decked out in skull tattoos. This, of course, set off the Paladin, who basically went "Give me one good excuse why I shouldn't kill you right now." To which I responded "I haven't done similar to you in all the opportunities that presented themselves. Feel free to judge me once I do something wrong." Which I thought would be good, it's in line with the Paladin's oath and could be a moment of reflection, but it also unfortunately played directly into my character's trauma so I wasn't going to have her push it farther than that.
The entire rest of the campaign, sadly, proceeded in a tense manner, with the Paladin making the decisions and throwing shade, me keeping my mouth shut and planning to have my character make a hasty retreat at any time, the Rogue keeping his head down, and the DMPC Barbarian not really getting what the big deal is but not taking a side. Eventually we ran out of module and I finally got a chance to show the one Wizard healing spell that literally hurts the user to do so, but by that point the damage was done and the game was ended.
Turns out, the Paladin player had wanted a character arc where someone stands up to the CHA-invested, plate-armored Smite machine with damage resistance 3, as though the party members with single-digit levels should know that PvP wasn't really an option despite how often it was brought up. The DM doesn't want to force people to play "correctly," and both the Rogue and Necromancer aren't going to risk their necks to fight morality with a Paladin. We all agreed it was a mess and we moved on to better campaigns. Finished some Mad Mage with them last week, was nice. Fought a hell-dragon and got promoted to partner with my patron and got married to the barbarian, ranger got to Wish his family back, and the sorcerer got to be an award-winning author.
What. Cain doesn't sacrifice Abel to Yahwee. Cain just kills him out of jealousy. Cain tries to hide it from Yahwee (Am I his keeper?).
Cain only gives a burnt offering of vegetables. Lame. Meanwhile Abel gives a ritualistic blood sacrifice + burning the corpse (burnt offering) of one of his animals. Metal.
The better analogy would be Jephthah in Judges: 11:32 who does ritualistic blood sacrifice (burnt offering) of his daughter.
Jephthah wants to win an upcoming battle but is too weak so he promises ahead of time (pray it forward) that if Yahwee grants him victory then he would sacrifice the first thing that walks out of the door of his home when he gets back. Yahwee apparently likes this as Jephthah gets holy powers like The Doom Slayer and wins several battles. He goes home and his daughter walks out the door.
So uh, it's Abraham that held the knife to his son... We started off strong, but then somehow Able came back to life and snuck an L into poor old Abe's role...
So I played a newly minted paladin on a redemption arc, and it didn't last long. My character butted heads with my fellow players and the choices being made by the party... It was very fun for me, but unsustainable. I retired the character because it wouldn't have been true to their very being to keep turning an eye to the rogues antics. The dm and players wanted the character to stay, but it would have turned them into a lie. I think that character was one of the funnest I've ever played, but if I'd kept them then it would have destroyed the good good aspirations of this character by constantly bending on their morality.
Being good good is untenable unless you surround yourself with like minded individuals, and as you say that's just not very fun... It's hard and boring. But I say it can be a lot of fun as long as you stay self aware, and are willing/ready to retire said characters if the table cannot/will not work with you on it. It's also unfair to ask others, as players or dm, to accommodate you in this way to keep a certain character. They're doing what they want... But if their character wants what yours does, then we have a chance for fun growth.
Eh, idk. Don't let your dreams be dreams, but don't be a dick.
The worst lawful stupid paladin I ever had as a DM was a player who specialized in the mantra that as long as it was self defense (or looked like it) killing people was A ok. This lawful good paladin was more bloodthirsty then the rogue assassin whos whole job is to kill things, The two most egrious examples were when the party was traveling the countryside looking for a place to stay , they were walking on some old farmers land and the farmer was just a grumpy old man who wanted them off his property because these five armed men looked like trouble. The paladin gave him the whole speech as to how he was a warrior of the gods and he was in the right to cut through his land since he was a holy paladin. When the party wouldn't adhear to the old mans several requests he drew a sword sort of as a warning that he seriously wanted him gone. Well this was enough for the paladin to divine smite the old man in the face since according to him thats how "self defense works" he also had previously killed a bandit who tried to surrender and even offered to turn himself in if they spared his life. Eventually i made him a oathbreak for his numerous bloodthirsty ways and when he didnt like that he left the group.
Fyodor is like: ivan you're bad
ivan is like: hmm Im bad (micheal jackson riff)
In my current campaign, I'm the only neutral character in a team of good character, but they are constantly executing prisoners. Like, they were trying to get information out of a captured enemy, accidentally killed him, potentially sexually assaulted him, ressed him, and then when they got the info they wanted to kill him again. They want to constantly kill my character's friends because they made the sin of being friends with a tiefling. They threaten to neuter me. The cleric thinks geas is mind control and wanted to use it to force my character into suicide, multiple times.
I'm starting to think my character is actually too hard on himself and might be a better person than he realized, just someone who faced a lot of difficult situations and had to make some bad choices in his past. He often tries to defuse situations. He tries to talk people down, properly have them brought in to answer for their crimes rather than being judge, jury an executioner even though this typically leaves him open to be injured by enemies taking advantage of his compassion. Unfortunately, when he really gets going into a fight he can go overboard, so a couple of times he annilated some weaker enemies even though he subdued their other friends just fine. The thing is, I'm the rogue.
My poor rogue spends so much of his time trying to discourage all the good members of the party away from doing evil things. I'm pretty sure if someone told them burning down an orphanage would save the world, they would ready that BBQ without even like, double checking to make sure it wasn't a ruse.
Doesn't sound like a fun group...
I played a LG Pally, homebrew setting so the order worshiped a god the GM made, and the order was controlled by the GM. Played him as a bit of a himbo, always having good intentions but not having very complex ethical views. As a paladin he was obedient to his order, which gave the GM influence if the LG every became a problem. If my pallly was being too stubborn about something someone else from the same faith could just explain things to him and he'd come around. When the druid died she rerolled as a cleric of the same faith who would often explain ethics to the pally. Ended up making it a group that had discussions about ethical philosophy all the time, even mid-fight which was entertaining.
My story about a lawful-stupid paladin: we got into a situation where we *could* destroy NUMEROUS tiny enemies. We just had to kill them in their sleep. Paladin refused, and he woke them up. The party escaped and trapped him in the room with the enemies. He was eaten alive, and no one cared except the guy playing the paladin.
When I play lawful or good good characters I usually give my characters levels of which they can tolerate evil acts. What can or cant they do with their morality is the challenge I love to give my characters. I also play with a crowd that likes writing characters in scenarios as much as playing the game so we read alot of our universe lore before writing our characters. If enough nonmoral acts happen, I'm not afraid to have my characters abandon the party and write a new one.
Ok so actually my favorite character I’ve played was a Cleric that acted like that moral center diplomatic good guy type, but was actually secretly working towards evil ends. It was so very fun and the heel turn where he betrayed that party had everyone hollering. I think in a worse game it could’ve ruined things but we ALL loved it
People _really_ underestimate the value of playing Evil characters that understand the importance of doing good actions simply because it can help mask their true intentions, further servicing their own personal and selfish goals. Most players who pick Evil characters, especially inexperienced players, just want to be a dick to the other party members, and fail to recognize that for a party to function as a dynamic, they all need to want to do the same things, regardless of their reasoning. If the party is tasked with saving an innocent hostage, then the evil character kills that hostage, you're not "playing your alignment," you're actively creating a narrative issue where the party now has little to no reason to trust your character or want to continue adventuring with them. But an evil character that helps save the hostage to gain the fame and power that an adventuring party earns over time, only to betray the party when the time is right to reveal their goals and machinations to the world? THAT creates a memorable experience, because as far as the rest of the party is concerned, you'd been helping them make the world a better place. It helps if you sprinkle in foreshadowing early on, and get a little more heavy-handed with it before the reveal, but all the same, it can lead to some of the most interesting moments in TTRPGs.
So fun fact about the binding of Isaac episode :
A few Jewish interpretations are based around the idea that God WANTED Abraham to disobey, to refuse what was clearly an unjust and hypocritical order, that was his test, and he failed. You know, modern Jews have a problem with blind obediance and people who are just following orders for obvious reasons. But it is possible that it was the original message.
I played as a monk who was basically Forrest Gump everything monk related came so naturally to him but his understanding of the world and morality all came from everything his late wife told him. In the game we were part of the queens personal guard and even though killing people and such was what we were told to do id still scold my party members with my wifes wise words and it lead to the most passionate discussions and arguments id seen in my dnd group mostly between me the chad wife enjoyer and the virgin queen fan.
Thanks for this.
Well said.
To be fair, Abel and Abraham are rather simlar names
we killed him and told the player he wasnt allowed to play L/G anymore.
in another case, because the player was actually trying to work with us, we hatched a scheme to work with devil summoning evil accomplice for the ends of stopping her much more evil mom by giving the paladin something to do that would take him and a couple other members of the team away from the situation for a couple in-game days. (we used compressed time by not really rollplaying or dice rolling much to get that part done quickly so he didnt have to sit with his thumb up his butt while we played without him.)
I did a bleeding heart healer once in a sorta Lovecraft setting in a pathfinder game once
On paper I was a asamare bard,
But in the game I was a 2 hundred year old man, cursed with an extended life. A seasoned individual who felt the crushing weight of the world, and long past his prime. Shyed away from the scociaty that hated him for his void touched appearance.
Using his military knowledge and serums of his own concoction and essence, he practiced as a back alley doctor. Healing the poor and ill that found their way to him.
Pulled into a twisted adventure filled with the undead and things better left forgotten.
He died as the child that he so desperately tried to protect, ate his soul
After that I played a gunslinging goblin
Pew pew
Was all too happy to murder and destroy
And enjoyed being with his friends
Battered and broken, he was behead by the paladin
The games came to a quiet and ungraceful ending after that
I remember the one time I did play DND with some friends, I didn’t really know too much about what I was doing or what my character really was other than he was a dragonborn, so I ended up being as chaotic as possible, picking fights with everybody! Even one of the other players had to literally hose my character down just to get me to chill.
So long as it's more often in service to the party rather than in detriment to them, chaotic party members are great! They allow for fun and unexpected moments to arise and don't really have a code to follow so just do whatever they feel like in the moment. The best way to play chaotic, I find, is to still do what you want, but value the opinions of your friends/party members. Like, sure, it would be SUPER fun to start another tavern brawl right now... but the bard was really miffed that I ruined his show with the last one and the rest weren't super keen with being kicked out onto the streets at night, so how about I... start an arm wrestling contest instead! Then if things just _happen_ to get heated, we can take the fight outside! Perfect!
I subscribed for funny cartoons, guess that's over with. Thanks for the memories, the most romantic MLP/Batman crossover with monkeys, and the wonderful Lovecraftian horror... With ponies.
I'm a little sad, but if we have good things all the time how would we know that they were awesome to begin with?
i think its funny that my paladin is statwise stupid but i decided a while ago that someone needs to be breaking the law and ping as evil for her to smite them, and works in a grey area when it comes to undead because she is an undead rights activist
Playing that sort of character requires everyone to be on board. I played a paladin-type and one of the people in my party was of a homebrew race who had to drain the blood of a specific type of npcs, who did not want to get drained. Needless to say my involvement in that party was short lived.
The "my party is always just going to ignore me and kill people for no reason" thing is what really makes playing a good person nearly impossible without the whole group doing it. Even if they agree to it initially, they will usually renege within a session or two the second that violence is slightly more convenient or expedient than being good. That's not saying violence is never the answer, just that people will use it when it is wholly unnecessary because the non-murder route takes slightly more time or effort. It's hard to justify a good person sticking around with the average party for any reason other than trying to restrain their violent tendencies, which you will pretty much always fail to do and be a buzzkill for even attempting. A lot of people treat the game as just an opportunity to be a violent lunatic, or only ever want to take route that requires the least thought or effort (usually brute force), or act like it's a video game where there shouldn't be any real consequences for anything you do. It's very unfortunate.
If you do not mind, I am going to expound on a bit of traditional Catholic theology.
Being lawful has little to nothing about being good. Being lawful is only about what is permitted by a government or kingdom that is in power! If a governing body decides that one should always hold the hand of a old woman is she crosses the street then that is lawful. Conversely a government could state that stopping the murder of a select group of people impedes the rights of others to take that life, then that is also lawful!
Both of these choices we can probably agree are on the good or evil spectrum, but that does not impact if they are lawful or unlawful.
I would say that the current alignment system is a fundamentally flawed understanding of moral theology and philosophy at best and pigeon holes characters into be utilitarian in their decisions.
I reaaally feel like the people playing D&D are just crazy at this point... In my table we never had a player killing people for the fun of it! Sure there are some violence incidents here and there, but it was always for a good reason, and mostly on self defence!
Heck sometimes players will try getting their enemies to surrender or get them to flee after a few takedowns, a lot is done with interpretation and making tough decisions, instead of just beating their way to victory!
I'm excited
Darn, its been forever
You accidentally mixed up the names of able and abraham for a sentence at the start.
How is it hard to be a "good" good character? I have trouble being evil...
One of the things we talked about in the chat is that sometimes "good" is easy if the setting sets you up with objectively bad enemies. Like Oprimus Prime is a "good" character, but it's easy for him to be good when Megatron is a huge dork-ass villain all the time. He doesn't have to weigh many options or balance very many needs, because usually stopping Megatron is the most clear-cut way to help everybody.
It gets very tricky to play a "good" character if the two sides of a conflict are two well-rounded factions of people with legitimate bones to pick, because the clarity of what is "good" becomes muddy, and if you passively choose one side because they spoke to you first or something, you're not very actively making a proactive impact.
In my experience, I've known a lot of players to be passively "good-ish", but I find those players will also go along with tremendously evil plans and even stand against justice if you make the conflict complicated enough. It's just that those games become really frustrating for those players too, as it's not usually what they signed up for.
@@Dawnsomewhere It's actually fairly easy to play a "good" character in a grey world. Anyone can self-flagellate after picking the lesser of two evils.
What's hard is to play a "good" character in a crowd of Jokers.
@@Dawnsomewhere Honestly, in a conflict with two sides justified in their fight, a good character will likely see the fight as not something to be won by either side, but stopped altogether through either diplomatic means, or fixing the problems that caused the conflict in the first place, in order to save as many innocent lives as possible in the process. One of the campaigns I'm playing in has two sides in conflict, humans and fey. The setting presumes the players are on the side of the humans, and initially paints the fey as wanting to eliminate humanity. But as the story unfolds, it is revealed that the human civilizations were founded through colonization and war of the fey land, and that the fey are technically in the right for defending themselves when the war began. But that was hundreds of years in the past, and though that may be no time at all to the fey, the humans that live now are several generations detached from the initial conflict, and are now solely fighting out of self preservation, rather than some righteous conquest. As such, for good characters, the focus of the campaign shifts from winning the war for either side, to stopping the conflict altogether and brokering a peace between the two sides.
In conversations like this, I have a saying I always tend to pull out; "alignments should be descriptive, not _prescriptive._" If you're basing a character's entire personality on one of nine very narrow, extremely vague moralities, you're not going to get a fleshed out character, you're going to get a stereotype. It'd be like taking one of the Meyer Briggs personalities and making a character based entire on that with no deviation, it's no better than making a trope character. Which, I should clarify, is not necessarily a _bad_ thing, but it becomes unnecessarily restrictive in games where alignment only really serves to inform a character's morality. But it should also pointed out that personality and morals can change over time. Just like someone's Meyer Briggs evaluation can changes based on the point in their life that they take it, so too can a character's alignment change though their actions and development through the narrative of the game.
Another really interesting is the way D&D specifically defined morality. Because quite honestly, no singular alignment is entirely in the "right." Good is simply a character's capacity to do things for other people, while Evil is their capacity to act in their own self-interest. Lawful is one dictated by laws or a code of conduct, while chaotic is one who acts on instinct, seeing rules more as restrictions. Using a quick comparison, what would each alignment's typical reasons be to kill a dragon? A typical good person would see the terror and destruction it's causing others and be spurred into action, a typical evil character would see the inevitable fame and glory that awaits them, a typically lawful character may see the dragon as being diametrically opposed to their virtues, and a typically chaotic character would see the dragon and fight it because it's a FUCKING DRAGON, come on, this will be awesome! At the end of the day, the actions these characters take are still a universal good for the area the dragon is laying waste to, but the mentality and reasons the characters take inform their alignment. So honestly, when someone wants to play a character who is a, "good person", I always try to steer them away from Lawful Good, as that is a character that sees their own code as the means by which they help others. It's significantly restrictive, and if done without serious thought put into it, leads to a more authoritarian character than a genuinely good one. If anything, I tend to push True Neutral as the healthiest mindset. It means you value everyone; you aren't constantly sacrificing yourself for others, but you're not a selfish individual either. It means you understand some laws exist to keep people safe, but you aren't beholden to the ones that actively hurt people for the benefit of others. It's the alignment I almost always tell people to start with to get a feel for their character, and if they play them in a way that leans organically towards one of the alignments, _then_ we change the alignment to match.
This being said, I do not think Lawful Good is impossible to play in a way that is both fun for the table and yourself. In fact, when one of my friends started a Decent into Avernus game, I made it my goal to show the actual depths of how interesting Lawful Good can be when done right. To do so, I took advantage of one little fact, a tidbit most overlook when making Lawful characters. You see, Lawful isn't some random need to follow every laws the individual comes across, to do so would inevitably lead to paradoxical situations where the law of one land specifically prohibits something a character's religion states is mandatory of its followers. A Lawful character is simply one that holds themselves to their own code of laws. Maybe they're a soldier following their code of conduct to a T, maybe they're a devil who only follows the terms of their contracts, or maybe they're a priest who follows the teachings of their god and shares it with others. The real kicker to the latter? Most D&D settings observe a pantheon, and that basically gives you an entire selections of codes to follow for drastically different Lawful characters. Thus, I created a Lawful Good Aasimar, a Divine Soul Sorcerer who has a direct ancestral tie to Lliira, The Joybringer, who values bringing happiness and freedom to others. His entire code effectively _compels_ him to action when he sees people miserable, taking the most immediate course of action to brighten someone's day and, if that doesn't work, finding the root of the problem and finding a way to resolve it. Thus-far, he has spent a revivify diamond to save a child whose sibling was saved to ensure they wouldn't be miserable and STILL felt sorry that he couldn't do the same for the mother who was also slain, slept with a literal succubus who promised to help him and his friends in return, and released an entire squadron in the hells from eternal torment, a punishment for betraying their comrades through desertion, instead offering them freedom, kindness, and a path towards redemption by asking them to help others in dire need. Especially telling in this regard is the fact that he is _constantly butting heads_ with another Lawful PC, an extremely pragmatic knight who follows her own slightly tweaked code of chivalry.
Woot
I never dvelve deep into DnD, but does alignment means you can be paladin of a battle hungry god and claim you can't be paladin due to alignment restrictions if you don't resolve every problem as violently as possible or not challenge every shopkeep you meet to a duel to obtain items?
In earlier editions of DnD - yes! Your powers came from your god, so if you didn't uphold your god's values, you'd lose those powers. Paladins were one of the stronger classes in the game because they got to do both magically-infused damage and healing, and the only drawback was that you had to adhere to a fictional code of ethics which would almost definitely not be well-expanded on.
In 5th edition, these are no longer god powers, but are instead "oath" powers, and you can only keep your abilities if you uphold whatever "oath" is granting them.
Religion in a shallow view of "good and evil" in an RPG can be a detriment, but if you look at what various systems and settings do with it, it can be really interesting.
Like, say, Exalts from Exalted. They are the champions of the gods and they are given power to rule over the world. What is right? Whatever the Exalts say. What if Exalts disagree? It's up to them to sort it out, the gods know not to mess with the titan killers they have created.
Or you look at the Immaculate Order from the same setting. They are highly qualified monks that travel the world upholding the laws and fixing problems. They don't have any deity to answer to, only their fellow monks. They have a high degree of autonomy since they are often months journey away from home, so it's up to them to improve the world around them, learn what it means to follow the teachings, and every now and then report on what they have been up to. If you need to kill a village because they started doing a peasant uprising around a false god, well, sometimes that needs to happen, and as long as you can justify it you won't get scorned, just don't make it a habit.
Or what do you do when a fallen god offers you endless power with no strings attached, but the caveat being that those powers only make you good at being a murderous tyrant. You don't have to kill, but you are so efficient at it, so why squander your talent...
It's a really fun topic to explore when you look past "I'm good therefore what I do must be good too..." tpsrpg.blogspot.com/2022/02/different-takes-on-religions-gods-and.html
You put quotes around the wrong good I'm pretty sure
1 week later: You said Cain kills Abel in the first story, and later in the second about Abraham & Isaac, "Abel" nearly kills his son? After himself being murdered? I thought you'd misspoken at first, but then a couple minutes later, you did it again. Maybe it was just a Sparklewinker/Sprinklewinker multi-misspeak, but as a gentle admonition from a Christian fan, don't lose your focus in the final editing process.
To be fair most Lawful Stupid characters are arguably LE. They go around bashing anyone over the head that doesn't adhere to their personal philosophy, morality, and justifications. That's rather narcissistic. At which point you just say, I don't allow evil characters in the party, and you've solved your problem.
I made a cleric of innocence in a pathfinder game with a paladin that had this sort of black and white view of the world, where if someone was in their way they were up to be killed. He viewed goodness, genuinely as a person outside of the game, as something that only has merit because it gave people a set of rules to listen to people like him. Like the dude genuinely thought he was this hyper intelligent mastermind of the world. I wish I could say this was resolved by me valiantly outsmarting him. I mean he wasn't my friend or anything so really that would have been the best route for a story. Some spectacular display of my own wit to psychologically defeat him in the field of cunning. But no. He was just a shithead who made games at the comic store unfun for me with sexist and homophobic jabs at me that ended with him getting arrested for loitering around a highschool.
All in all, what I guess I'm getting at is, sometimes people really do go around thinking they know everything and they are some patriarchal authority. They do terrible things and logic it's good because they want it. They act like children, but are adults and try and use any power to feel like it, giving them a reason to invade RPGs for their sick fantasies of power which make me a little more misanthropic. And sometimes you have a clown bard best friend who ends up accidently being a moral beacon of empathy and strength and you remember how most people try to be and you get a little hope.
An entire video about how to play a good character without ever really defining what good even means. Morality is subjective. Now I know how to play someone that you would consider good, but that's not very useful is it?
"I am upset because this man only spoke from his own perspective of the world that he holds, and he did not even speak from different perspectives, Wich he does not hold."
Law versus chaos is the dumbest alignment to include. It involves almost no thinking. Player reasoning is shallow and it's just a simplistic way to put jerseys on people. It's not actually "chaos" it's unlawfulness. All the decisions instantly boiled down to am I powerful enough to get my way? No? Then follow the lawful alignment so you don't get your ass kicked. It's a neutral and self-interested culture, What then? Then you do What you want to do? Don't sweat it unless it's going to screw someone directly over.
But what about a chaotic culture? They're already going to be about power.
That's really it. Boring as hell. Unless you're like playing Warhammer where there is some sort of weird ass stupid magical power magical creatures aligned with subjective concepts of law and chaos. But that's intended to be over the top and dumb. It's quite a lot of fun from what I hear.
With good to evil alignment you can ask real questions. Does this preserve me and other people? Does It make life better for more people or less people? Is this going to cause me trouble? Can I get my desires met and do what I want to do to others? What do I want in this situation? What would make other people happy in this situation? What is the most important to me? What is most important to other people?
Once your players figure that out then they get to screw with the system. Since they don't care about law versus chaos, just there characters, moral and ethical decisions, then you can have an entire party completely fine with breaking the law in a nasty oppressive society, and combining their efforts to avoid the governments dogs.