Alignment

 

Of all the modern 5E versions, in terms of alignment support? D&D 2014 and 2024 clearly win the alignment battle. Both systems preserve the classic AD&D-style 9-axis alignment system, so popularized in memes since the Internet was born. D&D 2024 reduces the mechanical aspects of alignment by removing it from monsters and by making spells such as "detect evil" detect only certain creature types. Also, where D&D 2014 has typical alignments for monsters, D&D 2024 does not.

So in a way, D&D 2014 is the strongest in terms of alignment and rules. I can see why the interactions with alignment rules were removed in 2024; they are an extra layer of rules used infrequently in special situations, and it is easier to leave them out, remove the special cases, simplify the game, and reduce the layered complexity of the system as a whole.

D&D 2024 is a more streamlined version of the concept, with alignment shifting toward a role-playing and personality-framing tool. It has very little to do with mechanical rules, and the game seems to be putting up a wall between roleplaying traits and traits that affect the rules. But they still kept the system and did not remove it entirely, unlike every other Open 5E clone.

Tales of the Valiant got rid of alignment entirely. Level Up Advanced 5E moved the entire system to "alignment traits," and it is removed from character creation. So, D&D 5.5E deserves praise for keeping alignment alive rather than throwing it all out. If we can point to bad choices, we have to point to the laudable ones.

The only game with the traditional alignment as we knew it in the old-school is still D&D. This is laid out best in the AD&D DMG:

BX only used three alignments: Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic. So, what does this do for us in an old-school game? Let's go back to the source material, again:

"Alignment describes the broad ethos of thinking, reasoning creatures — those unintelligent sorts being placed within the neutral area because they are totally uncaring. Note that alignment does not necessarily dictate religious persuasion, although many religious beliefs will dictate alignment.

The overall behavior of the character (or creature) is delineated by alignment, or, in the case of player characters, behavior determines actual alignment.

Thus, alignment describes the world view of creatures and helps to define what their actions, reactions, and purposes will be. It likewise causes a player character to choose an ethos which is appropriate to his or her profession, and alignment also aids players in the definition and role approach of their respective game personae."

-AD&D 1E, Dungeon Masters Guide, p23

From the master himself, Gary Gygax, on why alignment is important. Now, while AD&D 1E did have mechanical alignment rules (detection spells, etc.), the description of alignment feels more in line with the streamlining of D&D 5.5E. It is kept in the game because it is such a strong roleplaying tool, and given how complicated the rest of 5E is, something has gotta give, so alignment was shifted away from the mechanics and moved back to a pure roleplaying guide.

Alignment defines the reactions, actions, and purposes of intelligent beings.

That's it. Gygax hit the nail on the head there. If you need a guide on how to roleplay a creature, alignment shall be your guide. Do you roll a friendly reaction from a group of chaotic evil bugbears? That could happen. Just because they are friendly doesn't mean they are all just as noble and caring as you. Due to their evil nature, they may stab you in the back when they see a chance. Alignment tempers reaction rolls and acts as a buffer so that every friendly creature towards your party doesn't become a paladin who hangs out with you constantly as best friends. You still shouldn't trust those bugbears, even though they are acting all nice right now.

This is a huge failure for both ToV and A5E. We can always port it in, but we should not have to. This is a clear failure of the game design communities listening too much to social media, feeling that "alignment is outdated," overreacting, and removing it entirely, with nothing to take its place. Saying "the game should not make moral judgments" is weak, and really, it is removing a critical tool that the DM will use to do the same thing.

Games that want to focus on selling you prewritten stories will slowly remove the tools that you can use to make your own. Of course, alignment isn't necessary if you get everything from the adventure module. All the motivations are there! You don't need these "extra words telling you something twice."

Alignment is such a necessary rule; I find myself subconsciously importing it into ToV and A5E, since those games are harder to roleplay without this universal and useful tool. Not having alignment makes the game harder to play and also harder to DM. This group of orcs? They are lawful evil, and they will generally stick to a deal they made, even though they are still rotten to the core. They make deals, expect them to be honored, and have just enough belief in order and structure to stick to their word, too.

D&D does alignment the best, it always has, and I hope it will continue.

If you are running a story-based game, alignment fades in importance since the prewritten story tells you all you need to know.

If you are running a sandbox game? Alignment becomes one of the most important factors in reactions and trustworthiness, and gives you a broad brush to begin painting with before you settle on the fine details. Alignment is critical for sandbox games.

Structured Play Pitfalls

If you are the average D&D player, you have been trained by structured play in two truths:

• D&D is there to tell your story
• D&D must have structured and balanced encounters

These assumptions will get your character, and quite likely the entire party, killed in old-school play.

The wandering monster table does not care about throwing multiple very hard encounters at you, the longer you stay in that hole in the ground. You could roll badly for wandering monsters three times in a row, get overwhelmed, and the entire party is killed in a span of an hour.

The "environmental simulation system" of old-school play and BX does not care one bit about "your story" or "encounter balance." The world is rigged against you. You are always meant to die. The thrill is figuring out how not to.

Wizards of the Coast loves the facade of balanced encounters and story adventures, since these make for better new-player experiences. Players should feel thrilled that they went through a dungeon, completed the story of the adventure, advanced their personal stories, saved the day, and, in the end, "everybody wins." You look at the structure of any modern adventure, and it is 90% this.

Kobold Press and EN World work by this 5E assumption, too; you will find balanced encounters and a focus on narrative play in those systems as well. You cannot escape this, and you assume it is the norm.

Old-school play?

To heck with that, you are being dropped straight in the middle of a world simulator, and there are chances based on the time spent and the location you are in to encounter monsters. While the map may be keyed with monster listings, the world isn't, and you must get in, get out, manage scarce resources, find safe places, and survive long enough to head back to civilization and find a moment to rest.

All the while, wandering dungeon monsters and wilderness encounters are being rolled for. If the number on the table results in a TPK encounter, so be it. You decided to take this risk, go a little further out this time, explore one more room, and you paid the price.

This is not about a preset story, yours or the adventure's. If you are lucky enough to live that long, maybe you can tell another part of yours. A story is something that comes out of your efforts to explore the world and survive the chaos, and personal stories are something on top of that.

If you were ever into game modding, this is like taking Skyrim and adding all these "random world encounters" and "kingdom battle" mods into the game that introduces random groups on NPCs and monsters onto the map, and you can stumble into the middle of a fight where wolves are fighting with a caravan of traders, and you can choose to jump in, ignore them, or just watch and loot the bodies after the survivors move on. While you watch, a group of Nords or bandits could show up, and the fight could get huge and chaotic. Magic could be flying as you dodge random firebolts. The chaos could attract a dragon by the end of the fight.

Does this system care about CR and balance?

No. Not one bit. The world "is what it is."

BX and old-school play are the same way.

Thinking "this is the game about my story" and "the adventure should be balanced so we can complete its story" is something out of the artificial world of structured play. Encounters are not balanced here. You need to sneak past fights, play dirty, save resources, be clever, and learn when to turn tail and run. You need a retreat plan for when it falls apart, and an idea on who carries fallen friends who can't make it themselves. Your plan can't rely on one spell or person. You need to play smart and understand the world does not care about you or your story.

But the world can show kindness. You could roll a friendly reaction roll from a group of kobolds who take pity on you as you just ran out of a room after a bugbear killed your cleric and thief, and you are out of hit dice to rest and wondering what you are going to do. If you can speak their language and part with a little treasure, they may help you get your fallen comrades back, since they hate the bugbears, too, and they would be happy to fight a skirmishing retreat for you as long as you promise to kill the warren of bugbears when you return.

This is a dynamic encounter that the DM turns into a story on the spot; it's not "pre-written" into the adventure but happens organically through the dice, tables, world, and luck. These types of stories are better than pre-written character stories, the stories written into adventures, and anything an adventure writer could think up.

When you get back to town, the temple says they can't raise your friends, but they can summon a high-level vicar from the city who could, for a generous donation, and perhaps, a problem they may need help with...

After all that, and with your friends returned to the living (or not, with new characters created), you set out again, thinking about those bugbears. The survivors of that fight remember, and a plan is made to deal with this problem once and for all. And you can be sure those kobolds will be close by, watching or perhaps helping again.

None of this is your prewritten character story or the adventure's narrative. All of this happens organically through the world simulation engine. And you can have this in 5E, any version of it that you play, for free if you adopt an old-school method of play, and that "world simulation engine" mentality to DM-ing. Again, you do not need BX to do this. While BX will make the failure conditions harsher and more dire, 5E can play an old-school game just fine and be just as lethal and dangerous.

The belief that BX is some magical panacea to solve all your problems with D&D is not entirely accurate. You may try it and love it. You may try it, hop games again, and end up missing 5E. What BX can teach us is that matters, and that can be used in any of our games, is the lost art of how to play an old-school game. What we do is recreate the old-school playstyle and keep that independent from the rules.

That "sandbox engine" we used to have before AD&D 2nd Edition was replaced by narrative railroading and the video-game-like progression of D&D 3.0. Narrative games are easier to DM and sell adventures for; they will have a bigger audience, so there is a financial incentive to ship them. It is easy to sell a game with a predictable, reproducible, pregenerated experience that plays like a theme-park ride every time, for every group. It is insanely hard to ship a game that delivers compelling, easy-to-manage, sandbox play.

But once you learn, a new style of play and types of interactive worlds are open to you. Your creativity goes from slightly tweaking published adventures to building living worlds.

You can play an old-school game in your game of choice.

You do not need to change the game.

You just need to change the way you think about it.

A Blog for Everyone

Why did I start a 5E blog?

This came to me after realizing that many OSR YouTubers were treating BX as a "solve every problem" game, leading people to believe that a rule system was the answer to why they had fallen out of love with roleplaying. This is the classic "game hopping" cycle that even I go through constantly, and if you are a reader of my main blog, you know how the winds change in my mind.

But something told me "BX is not the answer," but people were getting this wrong, at least a part of it. I had to ask myself, "Can I have BX-style play in ANY game I play?"

And the answer is yes, I can.

I just need to go back to BX, pick out the classic methods and procedures of play from that game, identify them, and show people how to use them in any game. Any game can play "like" BX. Is it as lethal and deadly if I use 5E? No and yes, it depends on how we play the game. There are TPKs in 5E, but in general, it is less lethal than a BX game, which has a higher default tension level.

But lethality aside, my 5E game can be played using a BX turn structure and feels just like an old-school game.

And I went out and got D&D 2024, even though I feel I don't need it, and wasn't positive about the changes they made. I am supporting the game for this blog so I can speak to those players. The fact that most of the in-store play in this area is D&D 2024 means in-person play is very strong, and it may be a VTT thing where the D&D 2024 softness is seen as the lock-in of D&D 2014 content on VTTs, which means many are hesitant to break what they built online in their digital libraries.

And yes, I will try to play D&D 2024. If I want in on those local games at the hobby store, to finally become real again and play with real people, I will learn the new game. I am not so much of an ideologue that I will refuse to try new things, and I can gloss over parts of the game I dislike or disagree with (such as the missing humanoids from the Monster Manual and some of the art).

And I play Tales of the Valiant, so that gets supported here, too. All versions of 5E, even 2014, are supported here. This is a big-tent site, and all versions of 5E are loved and supported, as long as the character-building we love is there, and they can be modded to support an old-school style of play.

And since this is still 5E, moving between versions of the game is super easy. The differences are minor, and when you look at the entirety of 5E, they are so compatible that they are all house-ruled versions of each other, with D&D 2014 as the source document. Even if you are mixing rules in your head between versions, it won't really matter too much, and your game will be fine.

Even the excellent Level Up Advanced 5E, a niche version of 2014 that just amazes me with how well designed the game is, and it goes in a new direction, supporting all pillars of play. That is supported here, too. This has so many old-school nods, and D&D 2024's support for the exploration pillar of play was likely influenced by this game. Those wilderness adventure rules did not come out of nowhere, and the lack of decent wilderness exploration rules in 2014 is a sore spot, leading people to think D&D was solely a tactical, dramatic combat game.

Level Up A5E is excellent, and I am still a fan.

And, yes, we also support the classic D&D 2014 game. I have friends who are so broke they can't afford new books, so why should we exclude them? If this is what you have and love, why are we excluding you? Welcome, 2014 players, and your six core books with all those rules patches. I love this version, too, classic, unbalanced, broken, double-casting, broken combos, but very OG cool.

Plenty of people still play patched and fixed versions of D&D 2014, and they are just as viable and playable as any alternatives.

What unites us is old-school play. We don't want to change games, like all the YouTubers are begging us to play BX and other games, because it would fix every problem we have with roleplaying, and we still want to be able to walk into a hobby store and play with others. While I love a great, tension-filled, harsh game of BX, the 5E players do not have to be excluded from that experience because they don't change their game.

We can adopt BX's core principles and apply them in 5E. Will our game be as deadly and tension-filled? Will we be playing by BX rules to the letter? No. I don't expect that out of this. But we will have an experience that is much closer to the heart of the game, instead of the narrative story game that modern D&D has wandered off into the narrative story gaming of YouTube live-play, and we love the classic, tension-filled, resource-tracking, players-make-the-map, absolute blast of classic D&D.

We can get pretty close to classic D&D by combining BX procedures with 5E rules. The rest we can houserule, and we don't lose the games we love, nor do we have to change systems.

The dungeon turn? Players making the map? The wilderness turn? Monster reactions? Morale? Interactive play that does not rely on skill rolls? Light and torch-tracking? Wandering monsters? Time tracking? Clearing hexes and building domains?

None of those are magically dependent on the BX rules.

I can port all those structures and procedures directly into 5E and end up with an old-school 5E game that feels much more authentic than a FATE-like narrative story game that uses the 5E rules. Those procedures and methods are universal truths that we should not forget, nor write out of the game.

We can still play 5E and have an authentic, old-school experience.

Will it be exactly the same? No.

The real game here is in the methods, structures, and procedures. This is our Rosetta Stone, our source of truth for roleplaying. The way we play is much more important than what we play. If we can preserve the old-school style in our play structure, any game we play will be more fun for us.

Yes, BX is amazing and fun. The OSR YouTubers are often right; that simple, deadly game is a classic.

But the way BX was played can enrich and enhance any game we play.

And to the BX YouTubers, you need to go beyond procedure and structure, and explain why the BX rules and math are better than 5E. The procedure and structure can be easily ported to 5E. I know what I love about BX, but consider this a challenge to go beyond the obvious and get deeper into the why.

It is easy to be negative.

It is much harder to be positive and constructive.

If I can help you find a fun way to play 5E, take this old-school style into a gaming store, and show a table of players there "the way" while still playing the store-preferred D&D 2024 game, then my work here has value and is worth the effort. If I can make the game more fun for you and keep you from burning out, then that is one less person who leaves the hobby. If it helps you see 5E in a new light, not as a game where "skills solve everything" and "wilderness is just a cut scene," then I will have helped open the door to you for new adventures.

You will still be playing D&D 2024. But you will be playing it exactly how we used to play the original. You get the best of both worlds. Your table may see the game in a new light. You will bring the magic back to the table and not shortcut or shorthand the procedures of play for expediency. There is a magic in these old, dusty tomes of BX D&D. Let me help you find it.

The way we played is an absolute truth.

What we play can change.