A is for Alignment

Here is the first in my A to Z series of posts about my Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaign. This is a campaign I started in the summer of 2023. We're playing this game very closely to by-the-book. The book, or rather books, being Players Handbook, first edition, 6th printing, January 1980 and Dungeon Masters Guide, revised edition, December 1979. Those being the copies I've owned since 1982 when I started (incorrectly) playing this version of the game. The only rule broken is that in our game all characters use the male values for ability score minimum and maximum on pp. 9 & 15 of the PH regardless of sex. We omit the optional rules for weapon versus armor type and for psionics. We have added half a dozen supplemental rules.

Alignment is one of my least favorite rules systems within AD&D. For quite a few years I simply dropped it from the game, mostly because I did not want to interfere with player agency or tell players that they weren't playing their characters "right." Who was I to say, and why should I care anyway? I still don't like it, but it's not an optional rule and we aim to play by-the-book.

About a year into this campaign I was inspired to re-read the rules cover to cover and was shocked to realize that I had been playing the game incorrectly for over 40 years. A number of rules surprised me completely. Rules I didn't remember ever reading, using in anyone else's game, or even hearing of. I really was gobsmacked by this. I'll try to make a point of highlighting those in this series.

Alignment is one of those rules that has some surprising pieces that I just never realized. For example, "Whether or not the character actively professes some deity, he or she will have an alignment and serve one or more deities of this general alignment indirectly and unbeknownst to the character."

Each player character will serve one or more deities indirectly and unbeknownst to the character. I never caught that before. As a referee, I had better figure out who these deities are and then not tell anyone. Which I have. There are 17 of them.

The rules require the referee to track alignment "drift" as characters act in ways different from their professed alignment. I do this and share it with the players after each session. I'm breaking the rules to do so, however, as "While players will know that they must decide upon an alignment, for example, you, the DM, will further know that each and every action they take will be mentally recorded by you; and at adventure’s end you will secretly note any player character movement on the alignment graph."

That's one of several places where Gygax directs the referee to hide rules from the players, and I cannot abide that. Imagine yourself playing an unfamiliar board game with friends, one of whom knew the game very well. Partway through the game, after you make a certain move, the one who knows the game well tells you about a rule which significantly sets back your progress toward winning the game. You can't take your move back, and you would have made a number of other decisions during the course of the game differently had you known about that rule from the start. Would you like to continue playing games with that friend? That happens a few more times as you play because the rules say that not all of the rules should be known to all of the participants until they make a wrong move. Would you like to play that game again? I would not. How can one learn skillful play if the rules of the game are hidden? Why hide a rule that will be revealed later by a "gotcha" moment?

Not only do I share my observations about character alignment, but I articulate and share my guidelines for what kinds of actions cause drift one way or another, and how much, for characters of one alignment or another. I solicit feedback from my players on this and I entertain objections to my perception of alignment drift. So far I've only had one objection and the player's counter-point was so well thought-out that I had to agree and modified my drift chart accordingly.

Details about the setting, of course, can be hidden, and apparently the true gods of the AD&D universe are. In our campaign, set in a fantasy version of medieval Ireland, the characters and players know about the Christian gods, whom clerics and paladins worship, and the many Celtic pagan gods, whom the druids and rangers revere. The characters think they serve those gods, but those aren't the real gods. The real gods are my 17 mystery gods forever unknown to the players. They don't even know there are 17 of them unless they read this.