EPTOff-Topic General Discussion - Page 3026
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TheYango
United States47024 Posts
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Requizen
United States33802 Posts
On September 26 2014 15:32 WaveofShadow wrote: Can I be Chaotic Evil? How does this shit work My phone died sonib but you're gonna explain to me how I I mean you can, but it rarely works. Generally my groups have never been super strict with alignments, as long as all your actions made sense for your character we never forced you to keep track of your place on some mystical 3x3 grid. In the general sense, Evil characters are tricky to roleplay. Since the stories are mostly written for the PC to be a hero, the Evil character needs to find his own reasons to join the party. Usually for gold, or their own plans, or whatever, but eventually it's going to come to a head if the rest of the party is good in any way, or the story keeps putting you in the line of good quest givers and suddenly you have to explain to the king why you stabbed his courier for some gold and/or helped start a revolt in a neighboring town. Unless the DM is planning for an Evil aligned character, and the story is set in such a way that they can progress, usually they either tear the game apart, or get killed by other party members/NPCs at some point or another. Or you force the DM to railroad you super hard into doing the right thing, which is boring. | ||
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Lord Tolkien
United States12084 Posts
pls http://existentialcomics.com/comic/23 This is how I'd imagine it. | ||
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red_
United States8474 Posts
On September 26 2014 15:32 WaveofShadow wrote: Can I be Chaotic Evil? How does this shit work My phone died sonib but you're gonna explain to me how I Being CE in a party is usually really awkward, because if you stick to your alignment you probably fuck others over and/or piss them off, even if they are also CE. Think of your famous depictions of a CE character(the Joker is a super common example to bring up, Carnage another one), and how they would fit into a 'team.' That is to say, they're usually exploiting the team itself to further whatever fucked up cause of theirs they want to, and don't give a fuck about any 'common goal.' | ||
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Cixah
United States11285 Posts
Req we shall do glorious combat tomorrow. | ||
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WaveofShadow
Canada31495 Posts
Ok I think I already have an idea of what I want to do to some degree... | ||
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TheYango
United States47024 Posts
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Requizen
United States33802 Posts
On September 26 2014 15:58 red_ wrote: Being CE in a party is usually really awkward, because if you stick to your alignment you probably fuck others over and/or piss them off, even if they are also CE. Think of your famous depictions of a CE character(the Joker is a super common example to bring up, Carnage another one), and how they would fit into a 'team.' That is to say, they're usually exploiting the team itself to further whatever fucked up cause of theirs they want to, and don't give a fuck about any 'common goal.' There's a reason the trope is "Chaotic Asshole". It's rarely the case that the character does anything actually evil, usually they just trudge along with the team from A to B and occasionally stab their party member in the back when no one is looking, or poison the water or something and then just laugh because "lol evil". And then in the same breath, go back to walking and fighting alongside everyone when the story comes into play. But, of course, an actually CE character would pretty much never join a party and do something productive unless he's forced to. | ||
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wei2coolman
United States60033 Posts
Imo CE gets shoehorned into supreme evil trope unfairly. A true CE character can also purposely act LG with his group all while planning something truly evil or dickish. Or feels obligated to do LG things because giant money payout. | ||
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TheYango
United States47024 Posts
On September 26 2014 16:08 wei2coolman wrote: Not a fan of prealignment for characters. Prefer to let people playout their character a bit without letting other know before hand. Can make for more interesting game. Choosing a starting alignment is just the same as choosing any other component of your background--it's a starting point that gives you a direction to move with the character. If you don't give people a starting point they tend to stick close to their comfort zone or toward particular tropes. The alignment is a tool that allows you to define a character's philosophy and motivations in a straightforward manner that doesn't involve writing a 3 paragraph theology/philosophy treatise. I don't know why you seem to equate having a starting alignment to having everyone not the DM know about it. Typically I don't even let the players see each other's character sheets and any information known about each other's characters should be shared vocally in-game. | ||
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Requizen
United States33802 Posts
On September 26 2014 16:12 TheYango wrote: Choosing a starting alignment is just the same as choosing any other component of your background--it's a starting point that gives you a direction to move with the character. If you don't give people a starting point they tend to stick close to their comfort zone or toward particular tropes. The alignment is a tool that allows you to define a character's philosophy and motivations in a straightforward manner that doesn't involve writing a 3 paragraph theology/philosophy treatise. I don't know why you seem to equate having a starting alignment to having everyone not the DM know about it. Typically I don't even let the players see each other's character sheets and any information known about each other's characters should be shared vocally in-game. Depends on how RP heavy your games are. My normal group is pretty casual, we RP the necessary sections but our games end up pretty combat heavy and there's a lot of OOC discussion during out sessions. If you were playing "seriously" (whatever the hell that means), my group wouldn't even know what class I was until I wanted them to. | ||
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Parnage
United States7414 Posts
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TheYango
United States47024 Posts
On September 26 2014 16:18 Parnage wrote: Alignment penalty was the reason people stuck to the alignment as they saw it. I'm not sure if that's done anymore.. That hasn't existed since 2E except for Paladins. On September 26 2014 16:06 Requizen wrote: There's a reason the trope is "Chaotic Asshole". It's rarely the case that the character does anything actually evil, usually they just trudge along with the team from A to B and occasionally stab their party member in the back when no one is looking, or poison the water or something and then just laugh because "lol evil". And then in the same breath, go back to walking and fighting alongside everyone when the story comes into play. But, of course, an actually CE character would pretty much never join a party and do something productive unless he's forced to. Again, that's largely to do with misinterpreting "chaotic". "Chaotic" is not so much "I do whatever the fuck I want with no moral or philosophical qualms", but rather represents philosophical opposition to aspects typically associated with law--tyranny, oppression, etc. for CG; order, justice, etc. for CE; and some combination of the two for CN. An example of this misunderstanding is the common idea that a CG character is more likely to kill a wrongdoer than an LG character--when this isn't necessarily true since it's hard to assign a value judgment for killing in the law/chaos spectrum as easily as it is for good/evil. | ||
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TheYango
United States47024 Posts
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Parnage
United States7414 Posts
On September 26 2014 16:18 TheYango wrote: I mean usually people do share, but unless alignment explicitly comes up, people aren't going to be able to look up someone else's alignment, and there's no commitment or obligation to tell the truth unless it's blatantly obvious thanks to nature of the character. That hasn't existed since 2E except for Paladins. Neat. Sucks to be a Paladin still I guess. I dunno playing on alignment just seems like you set yourself up to be that person. I mean in all seriousness. No one is really always any one alignment and if it's a roleplayish game it does limit your creativity if you always know the lawful good guy is going to be lawful good. Eh game mechanics *shrug* Anyway, PX is being rational, Kotick was right.and NA teams are beating teams other then themselves. Ya'll have a good whatever you call Friday on this alternate reality. I need to get back to the Stargate.. | ||
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TheYango
United States47024 Posts
It only really runs into trouble when players and DMs try to ascribe more specificity to it than it's actually capable of (i.e. believing Lawful Good represents some narrow, specific points of view on particular issues when it's intentionally broad in order to summarize a wide range of potential characters). EDIT: Paladins are their own issue which OT had plenty of fun discussing last time. | ||
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red_
United States8474 Posts
On September 26 2014 16:18 TheYango wrote: I mean usually people do share, but unless alignment explicitly comes up, people aren't going to be able to look up someone else's alignment, and there's no commitment or obligation to tell the truth unless it's blatantly obvious thanks to nature of the character. That hasn't existed since 2E except for Paladins. Again, that's largely to do with misinterpreting "chaotic". "Chaotic" is not so much "I do whatever the fuck I want with no moral or philosophical qualms", but rather represents philosophical opposition to aspects typically associated with law--tyranny, oppression, etc. for CG; order, justice, etc. for CE; and some combination of the two for CN. An example of this misunderstanding is the common idea that a CG character is more likely to kill a wrongdoer than an LG character--when this isn't necessarily true since it's hard to assign a value judgment for killing in the law/chaos spectrum as easily as it is for good/evil. That's why Joker is used as such a prime example. He isn't just some crazed lunatic that runs around killing people. He loves going against 'order' even if that order is other bad guys. He's fucked over tons and tons of other members of Batman's rogues gallery, and he has purposely not killed Batman himself on many occasions. Even accounting for the fact that CE doesn't have to mean 'super giant evil asshole that murders everyone,' it's still incredibly difficult to work one into a party. There are plenty of 'not insane' CE characters in fiction, but they almost never function well in a group, and especially not when the group is probably working towards some kind of 'good' goal(I mean, at least other sides of the Evil alignment can go along with it for the monetary or other rewards, but CE generally shouldn't give a fuck about that either). | ||
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TheYango
United States47024 Posts
Batman himself is an interesting discussion, tbh, because I'm pretty sure the debate over whether Batman is LG or LN has gone on for years. | ||
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Alaric
France45622 Posts
Also depends on how you place your good/evil moral scale. Is someone like Magneto CG or CE? He's pretty extreme in his views and wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice "normal" humans, but at the same time he basically wants to fight oppression and remold the system into a fairer one for mutants. I don't know much about Drow society (and religion) but aren't they depicted as evil by nature? Although if from their point of view they're doing the right thing by sticking to their culture and adhering to their goddess' commandements, wouldn't the typical drow be good in his society, so for example a campaign set in there would make them evil for the outside world, but loyal good in the setting? | ||
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kainzero
United States5211 Posts
ugh that graveyard was way more frustrating than i remember. actually this entire game is... | ||
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