I have a question: Why do people have an issue with the phrase “it’s what my character would do?” I always use it as a chance to rationalize doing something I wouldn’t do (to myself) but seemingly it’s an issue
@nevaya6011 The problem is when they use it as an excuse to ruin the game for other people with antagonistic and toxic behaviour. Whenever you hear someone having a problem with this ohrase, 9 time out of 10 their refering to this.
"You're on a beach with some crates." "Cool, I open one." "It's full of carrots." "Oh. OK, I look around. Do I see anything?" "Just sand as far as the eye can see." "Hmm... Everyone knows that carrots are good for your eyesight. I eat the carrots and look again." "You..." "I eat *all* of the carrots!"
The intro story reminds me of this old joke: Two psychiatrists pass each other on the way to work. "Good morning!" said the first psychiatrist. The second psychiatrist thinks, "Hm- I wonder what they meant by that?"
I feel like people get alignment backwards. Your alignment doesn't inform your actions, your actions inform your alignment. Your character being good aligned doesn't mean they have to do good things, your character doing good things and being a good person makes them a good aligned.
It's not that they get it backwards, it's that they get it wrong. They look at the literal definition of each alignment, usually as presented in the PHb. But alignment is very broad and open in its interpretation. For instance, a Lawful character is not just someone bound by "Law"; as long as they hold unwaveringly true to a personal code or set of morals, they are Lawful even if they might also be a thief who robs merchants and nobles. My example for this is Samara, of Mass Effect. Her alignment is Lawful Good, without question.
@@MrCrunchytime Well put. Dead on about Samara. By her justicar code, absolutely lawful, by Alliance standards she would be judged 'criminal'. 'The Code' being the only thing that matters.
Given the game insists you choose your character's alignment *before* commencing any actions at all, it's not surprising that it's viewed that alignment dictates actions.
Dear god I can only imagine how the DM of the lawful good story would treat other alignments that aren't in the neutral category, I'm imagining someone making a true neutral character that basically sits on their ass and does nothing because choice would mean becoming either good or evil
Sh*tty DM: Did you have fun playing your character? If it were me, I'd either say, "*in a mocking tone* A Lawful Good character wouldn't have fun" or "You tell me, I didn't get to play MY CHARACTER"
I personally would have just handed my character sheet in to the DM and said, "well you seem to be having way more fun playing my character than I am."
Even more that it ultimately encouraged someone to pick chaotic neutral after so many of those alignment use it as an excuse to do whatever they feel like.
Seems this dm doesn't know that most npc's are by default Lawful Good, following the law and being relatively nice and helpful. Lawful Good does not mean one must live as a martyr, naive cinnamon roll, or an unwavering defender of the moral high ground... Alignments were never meant to be so restrictive. Same with evil, "evil" doesn't mean you have to be a baby eating puppy murderer actively going against the party. It just means that your actions are on the cruel - morally grey spectrum.
@@ArcCaravan I had a DM once who basicallly told me that if I was to play a Lawful Good character, then I would have to abide by evil laws, because obeying the law no matter what was part & parcel of the deal. Also, basically that if an innocent was in danger, I would be compelled to Leeroy Jenkins it, strategy, common sense or even the most basic sense of self-preservation be damned.... That's why I tend to play Neutral Good or even Chaotic Good (or whatever their equivalents are), because I feel that if the law flies in the face of what is right, I'll stand by what's right any day of the week. Nor would my characters just bum-rush all half-cocked into a situation that looks bad without at least getting some basic intel first, and I won't be railroaded into doing so just because I chose Lawful Good as an alignment. Granted, this lousy interpretation of what Lawful Good is wasn't as bad as the horrible example in the video, but still, it's why, even after 23 years of playing TTRPGs, I won't touch Lawful Good with a 40ft pole.
@@DJ_Bonebraker Your DM doesn't sound much better than this one. And it sounds like your DM's interpreted lawful good as "lawful stupid" while the story described "stupid good". Instead of allowing conflict or reasonable alternate interpretation, the players are made robots with a railroad made for them.
Josh Strife Hayes described sandboxes perfectly: Even sandbox have some guidance, you give kid shovel and bucket and you show them how to make sand castle out of it
@@eldritch-rage Whether the greeting posted is polite depends on what your social relations are to the people being greeted as well as where you (and they) live. Social norms vary vastly across cultures, which is why you should at least spend a bit of time listening to how people talk to each other whenever you're somewhere new. That being said, the response was way out of line with what I'd expect, even if the greeting was considered rude on that server.
Basically it describes those who are more than "super fans" in any given fandom and transcended the need to communicate normally. Their thought patterns have been elevated into a higher plane of existence, normal people would never understand nor comprehend their humor
I'm not that into alignments but even I know lawful good doesn't equal martyr, doormat or even killjoy. Just someone who follows the laws of the land or has a strong moral code with good motivations from what I gather.
My biggest problem with alignment is that even the defining terms don't make it easy to explain or understand. Like, the common description for lawful vs. chaotic: lawful abides by the Man, while chaotic defies the Man. But what are we defying as the Man? To use Firefly as an example, Malcolm Reynolds could be labeled as chaotic OR lawful good, depending on whether we define the Man as the Alliance, or Mal's personal code - he explicitly attempts to stay away from Alliance-friendly spaces, so does their law apply in terms of lawful or chaotic? At the end of the day, it's a flawed system that's really best for a surface summary of the character, and deviating away from that for a single action is not a change of alignment; we all do something we wouldn't expect of ourselves if we're under major duress.
Imagine needing such a protagonist fix, you try to shove 6 seemingly indifferent square pegs through the same round hole in hopes one will fit. And the GM willing to silently end the campaign after Randy leaves would give me the feeling he ran this campaign for him, except he never gave Randy's characters staying power.
I think DMPCs can work as long as they aren't there for the DM to steal the spot light. I've only had two instances of DMPCs but the first was the DM giving the party a companion to help with damage dealing because most of the party was new to D&D and thus was still learning how to play their characters. I was the only experienced player and had opted to play a healer so the others could shine and I ending up being a jack of all trades so the DMPC was to remove some of the burden. The second one was a lot more like the DM putting themselves in the party, but they weren't being mean about it and was mostly doing support for a lot of relatively new players. It's all about the intention behind the use of the DMPC.
Oh no, that story. The story after the intro story. The one with the Kraken..... I..I had to pause it after they got to the beach and all they could see is sand because--because this intro hook is exactly the same as the one a DM did for my first time playing 5e, and that DM...that DM was a horror story all on its own that I've debated sending to Crispy. Imma keep playing and edit this comment later but Oh mY GOD if it's HIM I'm gonna lose my mind Edit: Okay. I'm almost 1000% sure that is the same fucking campaign I was in. We had a ranger with Goodberry and Create Water, they had wandered around for THREE sessions before getting to the edge of the beach--and when I joined, I had been there to fill the slot of a player that had just left. MY GOD does that story not get any better. This DM was very much "Have you ever watched Critical Role? You really should, because I'm gonna be styling my game a LOT after Matt Mercer." Like I'll give him credit for easing me back into D&D after a very long break from 3.5 to 5e and for introducing me to Critical Role, but MY GOD that Campaign was SUCH A SLOG and a nightmare and ended up literally going nowhere. The DM ended up Ghosting his own campaign, and one of the other players became our DM for a Taldorei based game, and the old DM joined as a truly Nightmareish player. I'll sit down and write up the whole experience at some point, but it is....it's a long one.
Dude I've been in this same spot on this channel. Mine was a Monster Hunter furry erp. I was not told it was an erp beforehand. Really enjoying hearing the story from the perspective of another player
@Chariot Boi I am shocked that someone just knows this off the top of theor head. I'm the bard that's mentioned at the beginning of the story and then never again
@@donniejefferson9554 as a monster hunter fan boy I was extremely offended by literally everything in that game being not only used for erp but the Mizutsune at like level 1 was bs in terms of difficulty and to add to it the fact that only males are permitted to be hunted just shows how little the DM cared. Sorry for the rant that story still turns me vitriolic 🤣
@@chariotboi5061 I get it. I went in with no knowledge of the world other than knowing it was about hunting giant monsters. I was still pretty sure the dm wasn't doing it right. I can still picture the exact rule 34 mizutsune in my mind.
First Story: I feel like the "world built around the players" was literally the DM expecting one of the players to say "I know this island... there's a city right over there!" and then for a city to magically appear. Literally make the players build the world for him as they wandered around the wasteland. If that's the case, what a weird way to develop a world.
Intro Story: I wonder if OP asked the people who attacked him how a stranger *should* approach them, knowing absolutely nothing about them, beyond a "hello, how's it going?" I feel that if they'd asked them anything more pointed, the same people would've attacked them for making assumptions about their interests or something. "Hey, you guys got a D&D game I can join?" "Psh, please, all you idiots think that all we play is D&D! We play other games too, you know!" It just sounds like they were itching to fight about anything. Bullet dodged.
I consider it a mini miracle that my game that has a lot of sandbox to it has gone so well. Though I have tried very hard to make clear what is going on and give some suggested directions when the party reaches the end of their current thread they decided to pull on. It means they have freedom to do whatever they want still, but I have the ability to gently guide things when needed.
In regards to the story involving "LG characters would/wouldn't do...". I've played Rifts for a while, and liked something from it. In particular, there's a section in the core rules that literally gives a guide on how each of the alignments would act. It is not a "set in stone" kind of thing, but does say how each alignment views things like torture, allies, and the like. I have yet to find anything even remotely close for D&D/Pathfinder (based on 3/3.5/PF1e). I feel that D&D/Pathfinder would benefit from something like this.
My group doesn't use alignment anymore, we moved over to the MTG Color Wheel. It comes into play just as much as alignment does... Not at all, but it does help with building and playing our characters.
@@Tytoalba777 It's funny because anything can fit any color, the colors are more of a Core Theme to your personality. Like let stay you're a fighter, you can be any color because anyone can pick up a sword, but let's say you're battle master trying be the best swordsman, that's starts leaning towards blue. But you're also very selfish with your learning and don't want to help or teach anyone else, Oh look who has some black in them. Blue Black Battle Master Fighter, then we can make a card for you.
@@Tytoalba777This is the shortcut list i use with my group, but you can it up and find more details on the wiki and stuff. White: Peace, law, structure, selflessness, equality Blue: Knowledge, deceit, caution, deliberation, perfection Black: Power, self-interest, death, sacrifice, uninhibitedness Red: Freedom, emotion, action, impulse, destruction Green: Nature, wildlife, connection, spirituality, tradition
Crap like this is why people don't really understand Lawful Good. They assume it means "lawful stupid" and, while it can be, it doesn't have to be. I've played 2 lawful good characters in the past. One was a dark elf fighter/barbarian guild merchant who was so traumatized by his parents murders that he spent the next century locked up in carpentry guild learning as many random crafts as he could just so he wouldn't have to deal with his problems immediately. He was nice and helpful to a fault but it came from a place of fear of not being needed so his new friends were really important to getting him to go out a take a few risks. My other character was a half orc celestial warlock. She didn't have many friends so when she realized her kind heart and noble spirit got her some attention from a celestial, she vowed to use her powers to become a super hero. However she was easily influenced by positive attention which once lead to one incident where she fell victim to a charm spell and wasn't able to help save our NPC teammate from his magical VR prison. My point is that neither character was perfect. They had issues and made plenty of mistakes along the way. And there was a bit of selfishness mixed in as well. But at the end of the day, what really mattered was that they did the best they could and stuck to their principles even when it would make things a bit tougher for them.
Being completely (to the point of suicidal) selfless is not Lawful Good. There is nothing Lawful about that, as wages are a lawful and good thing. Lawful is social contract, social harmony, not burning yourself to warm others.
Oh ffs. "That's not what a Lawful Good Characher would do! THIS is what your chatacher does..." makes me want to say "Quit playing my charachter for me or I'll flip the table over."
We're not playing D&D, so no alingments to get in the way, but in our Star Wars game my character is basicly the Lone Ranger. Does not kill, shoots the guns out of the bad guys hands, doesnt swear, tells kids to stay in school and drink their milk. The kicker is that I usually play something a little more impulsive and less rules following (loves a little spice, will sleep around, punch annoying nobles on the jaw when they're annoying and that sort of thing). So despite me trying to remain lawful good, my old tendancies leak in from time to time. Everyone else at the table will go "Is that something Izzy would do, or is that something YOU would do?" and often I will go, "Right, of course. She totally wouldn't do that!" and we walk the action/statement back. So having someone around to keep an eye on your alignment can be helpful and not annoying. Just not quite to the extent that GM was enforcing.
To the DM of the Anakin Skywalker Memorial Sand Beach from H3ll, when people call it a sand box they don't literally mean a sand box. I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate the next session OP wasn't there fore had a Giant House Cat covering up the giant dump of a campaign this was. Or at least I hope so.
Exactly. Alignment isn't a shackle for a character's personality. It's a loose description of how a character generally behaves. Being lawful good means you are usually a good person who respects the law. MOSTLY!! It does not mean you are the crowned king of piety and self sacrifices who's always pacifistic, even against CLEARLY evil monsters. I will never understand why DMs press alignments as rigid boundaries. It's not organic or real, and can kill the role play AND the whole game.
The alignment obsessed DM would piss me off. I'd have an impossible time not telling him to F off and let me play and I understand alignments better than he does apparently. Would it get me kicked out of the campaign? Very likely, but it'd be a relief and I'd search for a new group. I hope OP of that story does
"Sandboxes mean you can do anything!" No, no they really don't. The most famous sandbox game in the world still has an overarching story, characters you can interact with, and pre-planned quests at different points of the world. If anything, sandbox games require MORE prep than something a bit more focused.
@@eldritch-rage I mean Minecraft and Terraria are probably the closest to the "you can do anything" idea, but even then if you go in blind and just interact with the game, you'll eventually stumble onto the Ender Dragon/whatever endgame content Terraria has just because of how game play leads you naturally towards it.
As a DM, the way I handle alignment is this: Alignment is a moral compass, not a railroad. You generally want to head towards your alignment but sometimes, to go North you need to go North East to get around the cliff face.
Lawful good does not mean 'mentally inadequate'. It is lawful to receive pay for a job well done. Lawful good is not f-ing sucidal. It is not cowardly to dodge the blue dragon's breath weapon that will literally kill whoever it touches. Bad GM (whack with fly swatter) bad!!
"Even if the reason for the elves being hated was bogus, it would have been nice to have a reason." "So you see, the BBEG has this ancient relic called the ring of perpetual pissinoff. The people are stuck in a trans where they believe they hate elves but every time they try to recall the reason, they lose focus and get even more angry." "Neat, where is this relic from?" "Its source is that I made it the fuck up." "Good enough, inprovisation is what makes a good DM."
I may not be a player of the ol' TTRPG games, but I'm pretty sure "Lawful Good" doesn't equate to "Fucking goody-two-shoes". You can loot the body of a fallen person in a good way - searching for identification of sorts so that you may tell their next of kin what happened or alert the authorities. The DM of that story was really being restrictive
Personally, I like the alignment system as it gives a good base and guideline on how a character views the world, as well as a starting point to build their personality. Of course, it isn’t something to strictly adhere to and force your character to follow, but still a decent jumping off point. However, I can see why so many people hate it when you have DMs like this forcing players into trope checkboxes and making their alignment govern any player agency (or lack thereof in the case of the Lawful Good OP).
"A completely open sandbox" I'll admit, when I saw those words I immediately groaned, thinking I knew where it was going. It turned out far, far worse than I imagined; the DM dropped his players in a literal sandbox. I was not expecting that. The only possible explanation I can give for that is that the DM was trolling the shit out his players. I bet the dickhead was just laughing and laughing and stroking himself over how "clever and funny" he is. Edit: Moral of the story is, if someone claims "Open World" as a hook for their game, be wary. Don't necessarily pass it up, but just be ready to leave immediately.
@@ArcCaravan Funny you should mention that. These "Open World" DnD games always make me think they're trying to copy Skyrim, except they don't understand why and how Skyrim works as an Open World RPG.
In a sandbox game the GM is still supposed to put something interesting to find in every hex the party goes through. It doesn't have to be elaborate, but there still should be a point of interest to interact with.
Literal Sandbox - seems like the DM is so literal minded that when he heard that players like sandbox games he thought "yeah, a big box of nothing but sand. But how do they get there? Hmmmm, *_beaches_* have sand, so I'll have them get on a boat and get shipwrecked at the sandbox...." I've got a horrible suspicion that his attempts at "railroading" his characters would involve literal tracks and the players locked in a train carriage for the duration of the game...
In the game I recently started, the first module I ran has a few ways for the party to receive some land as part of or in lieu of the reward. My plan is to guide my players into establishing something like a guild through which they can receive new plot threads and work in replacement PCs in case of death or retirement. I'm gonna try to weave some of the modules together into a connected narrative with minor rewrites but to keep it from being too linear they'll get tips on new directions to investigate both during missions and from people seeking them out at home base
Running a game that is a fully party-drive storyline is HARD as a DM. But it's also some of the most engaging D&D I've ever played. The trick is to fully design the first session and end it with giving the players a lot of opportunities and information, and the question: "Where do you go next?" and the answer to that is what you prep for the next session. Rinse and repeat. Literally having an empty world is NOT how you accomplish a party-driven storyline.
3:25 isn't that the beginning of Divinity Original Sin 2? Okay, if they landed on an island with a fort... you know what? It would be better if the dm did stole Divinity's history.
just a heads up to any would be sandbox campaign dms. random encounter tables are your friend. having most of the encounters on that table be non combative is your friend.
I run a homebrew campaign where I have my own plan and linear timeline, but i run it as a sandbox because sometimes later I get really cool ideas I want to put in, or my players do something that changes the course of the whole campaign. It’s so fun.
Two of the primary systems I play in are ones that emphasize the world building outwards from characters and how they interact with it as well as their interaction with the world affecting how the characters change and progress so sandbox style games are no stranger to me and I like them a lot. I suppose I understand the appeal of wanting to 'breath of the wild' you're players but I don't understand thinking that you don't have to give them *something* to do. Even if it's just like a few quests or NPCs at the start for them to follow into something else. Open sandbox games are fine but my god you still have to give them somewhere to start their exploration.
intro story: yeesh. Dodged a bullet? More like dodged a nuke. I've had an experience or two on a game's official discord server where I was insulted for asking a "stupid question" and then gaslighted for "not being able to a take a joke". Again, OP dodged a nuke by bailing on what sounded like a VERY toxic cesspool. Cowboy self-insert: build up of world-ending entities... with no pay off allowed... EVER. I swear, that has to be the DnD equivalent of getting C-blocked or beaver dammed.
Any lawful follows the law of the land. The good interpret that law towards the good of others. The evil use the law to their own ends. Good = cares about others, may sacrifice own goals for others Evil = selfish, doesn't care much for others. Can sacrifice own goals for others in rare situations Being good doesn't make you a killjoy Being evil doesn't mean you have no friends and kill every baby you see... That's chaotic stupid evil on a rampage In Ad&d, alignment was detectable with spells. People didn't read the descriptions of those spells. An character radiated their when doing acts that fit. Unless you were high level due to pursuing aligned acts. Such as a high level murder cleric. Or high level paladin who never swayed from his path. Alignment went so wrong it's become nearly nothing
I love sandbox games. But they require SO MUCH prepping. The only difference is you prep week to week, rather than long term prepping. BIG DOWNSIDE, you have to prep far more overall. You don't know where they are going, you need to be prepared for them to do something totally abstract each week.
When referring to alignment, realistically even the most evil person can do something good that doesn’t benefit them. And even someone who is good can crack and do something evil. Alignment is something that guides your characters, not something that should confine and bound them.
that one dm that forces the player on how to play a lawful good character is annoying. (I personally love having alignment, mainly for myself to know roughly what may or may not make sense, I never force it upon someone unless they don't know what their character might do.
Independently of how awful the story about literal sandbox turned out to be, from the beginning I've catched the hugest player red flag from the interaction: DM "By the way, playing an elven race (specially a high elf) would be pretty roughly, everyone hates them for plot reasons that i plan to reveal later on as you play" -> Player completely ignores the warning and the worldbouilding and decides he has to play an elf because that's the preconceived idea he had prior to character creation with the dm, demands to be told things he's already been told the characters are supposed to discover as they play the campaing, and proceeds to complain about this situation he single-handedly made for himself.
Opening story reminds me that a friend long ago got kicked from an RP Server because the people there expected purple prose level paragraph long sentences from characters during roleplay and got salty at them giving simple greetings or short responses. I think perhaps people like that believe they're being clever, but they come off like they own a stinky cheeto dust laden fedora.
Every world has boring spots, even fantasy ones but you got to make sure that your players get away from there again soon if they manage to get lost in one. Who just strands their players on the most boring beach in the multiverse?!
1st: Was quite confusing. I mean if they came in like a trainwreck, cussing like a sailor or some kind of rude joke...sure I could see that...but a simple hello...the hell is wrong with them? XD 2nd: Its fine if you have a sandbox game...but your players have to be in on it...why not just play one of those survival games? Guess we know why he didn't talk about his elf lore...no elves in sight. 4th: so DM forced a lawful stupid...guy should really read the "Book of Exalted Deeds." Completely took away player agency. Celestials are good, yes. However they range from L, C and N depending on which plane you came from. But seriously...read the Book of Exalted Deeds, its a handy book for good alignment things., especially when it comes to the heavens.
This is why I don’t like how dnd does alignment. I feel like a sliding scale based on actions taken like in fable and Star Wars games where your characters moral perception is based on the decisions they made, rather than some character trait assigned during their creation. It feels more realistic.
I keep it in alignments but I am aware that you don't have to play it symmetricly. Ex. Once you are good, once you are lawful. If it happens that your decision is both great. It's more one the other? Good. You are True neutral? Sweet be as balanced as you can be or play fast and loose as long as universe checkbook stays 0
I tend to be a bit picky about social norms myself possibly due to my neurodivergence, usually because I hear or see a few things as like, empty formalities more than anything. "Hello." obviously not so much, but I would prefer if people said more than that because sometimes starting a conversation purely off of the exchange of formalities can be difficult. The only one I genuinely gripe about is "GG" because I can't tell if it's sarcastic sometimes.
Yeah, that last one I stopped believing about the time the lawyer appeared and claimed he could personally issue criminal harassment charges against the strawman bigot.
Honestly, the player of the last story were either gifted with a saint's patience or complete idiots - I would have exploded. And this comes from someone who had more than his fair share of wannabe railroaders in his life, with the only difference that none of us were going to just take it passively; whether by pulling the snark up to eleven, having the characters become suicidal or turning ourselves (me in particular) into bona fide minmaxers, we would force them to drag us kicking and screaming along their goddamn railroad.
Obviously, I don’t personally know the DM in the “lawful good” story, but I have enough personal experience with amoral nihilistic jackasses to say I suspect that DM was just one of those and in general had a chip on his shoulder against good alignments.
Alignment is a useless system with no mechanical function and you're better off without it. Give your character an actual personality. Alignments don't have an objective definition, and if you ask 5 people what Alignment Batman or Wolverine are you might even get 5 different answers. Alignment is terrible at defining anything about a character. It has no use in modern games, and other games don't have it, because you don't need it at all. I haven't played in a game that uses Alignment in over 10 years and we don't miss it and it has never had any effect on our games that we don't use it. It's useless.
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"It's what my character would do" isn't nearly as bad as "This is what your character does."
#Based
I have a question: Why do people have an issue with the phrase “it’s what my character would do?” I always use it as a chance to rationalize doing something I wouldn’t do (to myself) but seemingly it’s an issue
@nevaya6011 The problem is when they use it as an excuse to ruin the game for other people with antagonistic and toxic behaviour. Whenever you hear someone having a problem with this ohrase, 9 time out of 10 their refering to this.
"You're on a beach with some crates."
"Cool, I open one."
"It's full of carrots."
"Oh. OK, I look around. Do I see anything?"
"Just sand as far as the eye can see."
"Hmm... Everyone knows that carrots are good for your eyesight. I eat the carrots and look again."
"You..."
"I eat *all* of the carrots!"
In the game Orion Burger, you can distill 50 liters of carrot juice into a small jug and then drink it to get the ability to see in the dark.
@@schwarzerritter5724That is amazing
Let chaos reign!
The intro story reminds me of this old joke: Two psychiatrists pass each other on the way to work. "Good morning!" said the first psychiatrist. The second psychiatrist thinks, "Hm- I wonder what they meant by that?"
I feel like people get alignment backwards. Your alignment doesn't inform your actions, your actions inform your alignment. Your character being good aligned doesn't mean they have to do good things, your character doing good things and being a good person makes them a good aligned.
Yeah, that's why I don't like deciding alignment before playing characters. Because i don't know what they'd do in situations yet
Agreed. Alignment determining actions feels like it hinders potential character changes as a result of the campaign.
It's not that they get it backwards, it's that they get it wrong. They look at the literal definition of each alignment, usually as presented in the PHb. But alignment is very broad and open in its interpretation. For instance, a Lawful character is not just someone bound by "Law"; as long as they hold unwaveringly true to a personal code or set of morals, they are Lawful even if they might also be a thief who robs merchants and nobles. My example for this is Samara, of Mass Effect. Her alignment is Lawful Good, without question.
@@MrCrunchytime Well put. Dead on about Samara. By her justicar code, absolutely lawful, by Alliance standards she would be judged 'criminal'. 'The Code' being the only thing that matters.
Given the game insists you choose your character's alignment *before* commencing any actions at all, it's not surprising that it's viewed that alignment dictates actions.
Dear god I can only imagine how the DM of the lawful good story would treat other alignments that aren't in the neutral category, I'm imagining someone making a true neutral character that basically sits on their ass and does nothing because choice would mean becoming either good or evil
That makes me wonder why DM didn't have the chaotic neutral act randomly.
Ironically, that's one of the main philosophical conflicts in the Witcher
"Lawful GOOD!"
"You keep using that phrase, I don't think you know what it means."
This DM's strict interpretation of the alignments was INCONVIEVABLE!
Sh*tty DM: Did you have fun playing your character?
If it were me, I'd either say, "*in a mocking tone* A Lawful Good character wouldn't have fun" or "You tell me, I didn't get to play MY CHARACTER"
I personally would have just handed my character sheet in to the DM and said, "well you seem to be having way more fun playing my character than I am."
Forcing a player to play Lawful Stupid is a new one.
Even more that it ultimately encouraged someone to pick chaotic neutral after so many of those alignment use it as an excuse to do whatever they feel like.
Seems this dm doesn't know that most npc's are by default Lawful Good, following the law and being relatively nice and helpful. Lawful Good does not mean one must live as a martyr, naive cinnamon roll, or an unwavering defender of the moral high ground... Alignments were never meant to be so restrictive.
Same with evil, "evil" doesn't mean you have to be a baby eating puppy murderer actively going against the party. It just means that your actions are on the cruel - morally grey spectrum.
@@ArcCaravan I had a DM once who basicallly told me that if I was to play a Lawful Good character, then I would have to abide by evil laws, because obeying the law no matter what was part & parcel of the deal. Also, basically that if an innocent was in danger, I would be compelled to Leeroy Jenkins it, strategy, common sense or even the most basic sense of self-preservation be damned.... That's why I tend to play Neutral Good or even Chaotic Good (or whatever their equivalents are), because I feel that if the law flies in the face of what is right, I'll stand by what's right any day of the week. Nor would my characters just bum-rush all half-cocked into a situation that looks bad without at least getting some basic intel first, and I won't be railroaded into doing so just because I chose Lawful Good as an alignment.
Granted, this lousy interpretation of what Lawful Good is wasn't as bad as the horrible example in the video, but still, it's why, even after 23 years of playing TTRPGs, I won't touch Lawful Good with a 40ft pole.
@@DJ_Bonebraker Your DM doesn't sound much better than this one. And it sounds like your DM's interpreted lawful good as "lawful stupid" while the story described "stupid good". Instead of allowing conflict or reasonable alternate interpretation, the players are made robots with a railroad made for them.
@@DJ_Bonebraker that's not what lawful good is, but okay.
Josh Strife Hayes described sandboxes perfectly: Even sandbox have some guidance, you give kid shovel and bucket and you show them how to make sand castle out of it
The intro story was an example of how pretentious and full of themselves some people can be.
Imaging giving a basic but polite greeting to a group you never interacted with??? The audacity!
@@eldritch-rage I know, right?
Basic greeting for basic people.
@@eldritch-rage Whether the greeting posted is polite depends on what your social relations are to the people being greeted as well as where you (and they) live. Social norms vary vastly across cultures, which is why you should at least spend a bit of time listening to how people talk to each other whenever you're somewhere new.
That being said, the response was way out of line with what I'd expect, even if the greeting was considered rude on that server.
Basically it describes those who are more than "super fans" in any given fandom and transcended the need to communicate normally. Their thought patterns have been elevated into a higher plane of existence, normal people would never understand nor comprehend their humor
Trolling. Literally a giant sandbox.
The intro story dm was revolutionary. He brought Deasert Bus to D&D.
"I hate sand. It's course and rough and irritating."
-OP of the sandbox game, quoting Anakin Skywalker, probably.
"He's giving us a world for us to see fit".
Yeah, Arrakis apparently.
My Arrakis…MY DUNE!
according to that DM's interpretation of lawful good, every single employee who doesn't donate their every paycheck to charity is Neutral at best.
Maybe he's a CEO 😂
I'm not that into alignments but even I know lawful good doesn't equal martyr, doormat or even killjoy. Just someone who follows the laws of the land or has a strong moral code with good motivations from what I gather.
My biggest problem with alignment is that even the defining terms don't make it easy to explain or understand. Like, the common description for lawful vs. chaotic: lawful abides by the Man, while chaotic defies the Man. But what are we defying as the Man? To use Firefly as an example, Malcolm Reynolds could be labeled as chaotic OR lawful good, depending on whether we define the Man as the Alliance, or Mal's personal code - he explicitly attempts to stay away from Alliance-friendly spaces, so does their law apply in terms of lawful or chaotic? At the end of the day, it's a flawed system that's really best for a surface summary of the character, and deviating away from that for a single action is not a change of alignment; we all do something we wouldn't expect of ourselves if we're under major duress.
Imagine needing such a protagonist fix, you try to shove 6 seemingly indifferent square pegs through the same round hole in hopes one will fit.
And the GM willing to silently end the campaign after Randy leaves would give me the feeling he ran this campaign for him, except he never gave Randy's characters staying power.
I think DMPCs can work as long as they aren't there for the DM to steal the spot light. I've only had two instances of DMPCs but the first was the DM giving the party a companion to help with damage dealing because most of the party was new to D&D and thus was still learning how to play their characters. I was the only experienced player and had opted to play a healer so the others could shine and I ending up being a jack of all trades so the DMPC was to remove some of the burden. The second one was a lot more like the DM putting themselves in the party, but they weren't being mean about it and was mostly doing support for a lot of relatively new players. It's all about the intention behind the use of the DMPC.
Oh no, that story. The story after the intro story. The one with the Kraken.....
I..I had to pause it after they got to the beach and all they could see is sand because--because this intro hook is exactly the same as the one a DM did for my first time playing 5e, and that DM...that DM was a horror story all on its own that I've debated sending to Crispy. Imma keep playing and edit this comment later but Oh mY GOD if it's HIM I'm gonna lose my mind
Edit: Okay. I'm almost 1000% sure that is the same fucking campaign I was in. We had a ranger with Goodberry and Create Water, they had wandered around for THREE sessions before getting to the edge of the beach--and when I joined, I had been there to fill the slot of a player that had just left.
MY GOD does that story not get any better. This DM was very much "Have you ever watched Critical Role? You really should, because I'm gonna be styling my game a LOT after Matt Mercer."
Like I'll give him credit for easing me back into D&D after a very long break from 3.5 to 5e and for introducing me to Critical Role, but MY GOD that Campaign was SUCH A SLOG and a nightmare and ended up literally going nowhere. The DM ended up Ghosting his own campaign, and one of the other players became our DM for a Taldorei based game, and the old DM joined as a truly Nightmareish player.
I'll sit down and write up the whole experience at some point, but it is....it's a long one.
Dude I've been in this same spot on this channel. Mine was a Monster Hunter furry erp. I was not told it was an erp beforehand. Really enjoying hearing the story from the perspective of another player
@@donniejefferson9554oh no you're one of the cursed lore breaking Mizutsune encounter hunters?!😂
@Chariot Boi I am shocked that someone just knows this off the top of theor head. I'm the bard that's mentioned at the beginning of the story and then never again
@@donniejefferson9554 as a monster hunter fan boy I was extremely offended by literally everything in that game being not only used for erp but the Mizutsune at like level 1 was bs in terms of difficulty and to add to it the fact that only males are permitted to be hunted just shows how little the DM cared.
Sorry for the rant that story still turns me vitriolic 🤣
@@chariotboi5061 I get it. I went in with no knowledge of the world other than knowing it was about hunting giant monsters. I was still pretty sure the dm wasn't doing it right. I can still picture the exact rule 34 mizutsune in my mind.
First Story: I feel like the "world built around the players" was literally the DM expecting one of the players to say "I know this island... there's a city right over there!" and then for a city to magically appear. Literally make the players build the world for him as they wandered around the wasteland. If that's the case, what a weird way to develop a world.
The psychic damage starts right off the bat in this video 💀
Intro Story: I wonder if OP asked the people who attacked him how a stranger *should* approach them, knowing absolutely nothing about them, beyond a "hello, how's it going?" I feel that if they'd asked them anything more pointed, the same people would've attacked them for making assumptions about their interests or something. "Hey, you guys got a D&D game I can join?" "Psh, please, all you idiots think that all we play is D&D! We play other games too, you know!" It just sounds like they were itching to fight about anything. Bullet dodged.
I consider it a mini miracle that my game that has a lot of sandbox to it has gone so well. Though I have tried very hard to make clear what is going on and give some suggested directions when the party reaches the end of their current thread they decided to pull on. It means they have freedom to do whatever they want still, but I have the ability to gently guide things when needed.
In regards to the story involving "LG characters would/wouldn't do...". I've played Rifts for a while, and liked something from it. In particular, there's a section in the core rules that literally gives a guide on how each of the alignments would act. It is not a "set in stone" kind of thing, but does say how each alignment views things like torture, allies, and the like.
I have yet to find anything even remotely close for D&D/Pathfinder (based on 3/3.5/PF1e). I feel that D&D/Pathfinder would benefit from something like this.
My group doesn't use alignment anymore, we moved over to the MTG Color Wheel. It comes into play just as much as alignment does... Not at all, but it does help with building and playing our characters.
How does the MTF color wheel fit into the system? Is it, like, healers go to the blue category, fighters go to red, etc?
@@Tytoalba777 It's funny because anything can fit any color, the colors are more of a Core Theme to your personality.
Like let stay you're a fighter, you can be any color because anyone can pick up a sword, but let's say you're battle master trying be the best swordsman, that's starts leaning towards blue. But you're also very selfish with your learning and don't want to help or teach anyone else, Oh look who has some black in them. Blue Black Battle Master Fighter, then we can make a card for you.
@@luciferandassociates9255 im stealing that
@@luciferandassociates9255 Yeah, but, like, what do the colors actually mean? What personalities are associated with them?
@@Tytoalba777This is the shortcut list i use with my group, but you can it up and find more details on the wiki and stuff.
White: Peace, law, structure, selflessness, equality
Blue: Knowledge, deceit, caution, deliberation, perfection
Black: Power, self-interest, death, sacrifice, uninhibitedness
Red: Freedom, emotion, action, impulse, destruction
Green: Nature, wildlife, connection, spirituality, tradition
Crap like this is why people don't really understand Lawful Good. They assume it means "lawful stupid" and, while it can be, it doesn't have to be. I've played 2 lawful good characters in the past. One was a dark elf fighter/barbarian guild merchant who was so traumatized by his parents murders that he spent the next century locked up in carpentry guild learning as many random crafts as he could just so he wouldn't have to deal with his problems immediately. He was nice and helpful to a fault but it came from a place of fear of not being needed so his new friends were really important to getting him to go out a take a few risks. My other character was a half orc celestial warlock. She didn't have many friends so when she realized her kind heart and noble spirit got her some attention from a celestial, she vowed to use her powers to become a super hero. However she was easily influenced by positive attention which once lead to one incident where she fell victim to a charm spell and wasn't able to help save our NPC teammate from his magical VR prison. My point is that neither character was perfect. They had issues and made plenty of mistakes along the way. And there was a bit of selfishness mixed in as well. But at the end of the day, what really mattered was that they did the best they could and stuck to their principles even when it would make things a bit tougher for them.
Being completely (to the point of suicidal) selfless is not Lawful Good. There is nothing Lawful about that, as wages are a lawful and good thing. Lawful is social contract, social harmony, not burning yourself to warm others.
The DM in the alignment story was a serious problem. He obviously didn't understand the alignment system.
Oh ffs. "That's not what a Lawful Good Characher would do! THIS is what your chatacher does..." makes me want to say "Quit playing my charachter for me or I'll flip the table over."
Recognizing the Thumbnail art is always bittersweet because like 1. I love this character and 2. Oh no Harrow is now the Mary Sue in this story
Check out the description! Not just for the art but also for a disclaimer
@@CrispysTavern Hahaha fantastic looking out, love to see it
We're not playing D&D, so no alingments to get in the way, but in our Star Wars game my character is basicly the Lone Ranger. Does not kill, shoots the guns out of the bad guys hands, doesnt swear, tells kids to stay in school and drink their milk. The kicker is that I usually play something a little more impulsive and less rules following (loves a little spice, will sleep around, punch annoying nobles on the jaw when they're annoying and that sort of thing).
So despite me trying to remain lawful good, my old tendancies leak in from time to time. Everyone else at the table will go "Is that something Izzy would do, or is that something YOU would do?" and often I will go, "Right, of course. She totally wouldn't do that!" and we walk the action/statement back.
So having someone around to keep an eye on your alignment can be helpful and not annoying. Just not quite to the extent that GM was enforcing.
To the DM of the Anakin Skywalker Memorial Sand Beach from H3ll, when people call it a sand box they don't literally mean a sand box.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate the next session OP wasn't there fore had a Giant House Cat covering up the giant dump of a campaign this was. Or at least I hope so.
Exactly. Alignment isn't a shackle for a character's personality. It's a loose description of how a character generally behaves. Being lawful good means you are usually a good person who respects the law. MOSTLY!! It does not mean you are the crowned king of piety and self sacrifices who's always pacifistic, even against CLEARLY evil monsters. I will never understand why DMs press alignments as rigid boundaries. It's not organic or real, and can kill the role play AND the whole game.
The alignment obsessed DM would piss me off. I'd have an impossible time not telling him to F off and let me play and I understand alignments better than he does apparently. Would it get me kicked out of the campaign? Very likely, but it'd be a relief and I'd search for a new group. I hope OP of that story does
Came for the Harrow fanart, stayed for the awful TTRPG stories
"Sandboxes mean you can do anything!"
No, no they really don't. The most famous sandbox game in the world still has an overarching story, characters you can interact with, and pre-planned quests at different points of the world. If anything, sandbox games require MORE prep than something a bit more focused.
Like Elden Ring
Hmm, elden ring, skyrim, technically even minecraft and terraria
@@eldritch-rage I mean Minecraft and Terraria are probably the closest to the "you can do anything" idea, but even then if you go in blind and just interact with the game, you'll eventually stumble onto the Ender Dragon/whatever endgame content Terraria has just because of how game play leads you naturally towards it.
I mean… When the DM promised a “Sandbox”. They delivered a Sandbox.
As a DM, the way I handle alignment is this: Alignment is a moral compass, not a railroad. You generally want to head towards your alignment but sometimes, to go North you need to go North East to get around the cliff face.
First story I guess the DM took the term "sandbox" a bit too literal.
Lawful good does not mean 'mentally inadequate'. It is lawful to receive pay for a job well done. Lawful good is not f-ing sucidal. It is not cowardly to dodge the blue dragon's breath weapon that will literally kill whoever it touches.
Bad GM (whack with fly swatter) bad!!
"Even if the reason for the elves being hated was bogus, it would have been nice to have a reason."
"So you see, the BBEG has this ancient relic called the ring of perpetual pissinoff. The people are stuck in a trans where they believe they hate elves but every time they try to recall the reason, they lose focus and get even more angry."
"Neat, where is this relic from?"
"Its source is that I made it the fuck up."
"Good enough, inprovisation is what makes a good DM."
I may not be a player of the ol' TTRPG games, but I'm pretty sure "Lawful Good" doesn't equate to "Fucking goody-two-shoes". You can loot the body of a fallen person in a good way - searching for identification of sorts so that you may tell their next of kin what happened or alert the authorities. The DM of that story was really being restrictive
Personally, I like the alignment system as it gives a good base and guideline on how a character views the world, as well as a starting point to build their personality. Of course, it isn’t something to strictly adhere to and force your character to follow, but still a decent jumping off point. However, I can see why so many people hate it when you have DMs like this forcing players into trope checkboxes and making their alignment govern any player agency (or lack thereof in the case of the Lawful Good OP).
i know a few people who hate when u start a question with how or u just say hello. even one who didnt like when u answered with 1 word or shortened
"A completely open sandbox"
I'll admit, when I saw those words I immediately groaned, thinking I knew where it was going. It turned out far, far worse than I imagined; the DM dropped his players in a literal sandbox. I was not expecting that. The only possible explanation I can give for that is that the DM was trolling the shit out his players. I bet the dickhead was just laughing and laughing and stroking himself over how "clever and funny" he is.
Edit: Moral of the story is, if someone claims "Open World" as a hook for their game, be wary. Don't necessarily pass it up, but just be ready to leave immediately.
That moral makes me think of many conversations I've had regarding video games.
@@ArcCaravan Funny you should mention that. These "Open World" DnD games always make me think they're trying to copy Skyrim, except they don't understand why and how Skyrim works as an Open World RPG.
That wasn't sand box gaming, that was litter box gaming.
In a sandbox game the GM is still supposed to put something interesting to find in every hex the party goes through. It doesn't have to be elaborate, but there still should be a point of interest to interact with.
Lawful Good - that's exactly why I play Chaotic Neutral in games where I'm forced to have an alignment.
Literal Sandbox - seems like the DM is so literal minded that when he heard that players like sandbox games he thought "yeah, a big box of nothing but sand. But how do they get there? Hmmmm, *_beaches_* have sand, so I'll have them get on a boat and get shipwrecked at the sandbox...." I've got a horrible suspicion that his attempts at "railroading" his characters would involve literal tracks and the players locked in a train carriage for the duration of the game...
In the game I recently started, the first module I ran has a few ways for the party to receive some land as part of or in lieu of the reward. My plan is to guide my players into establishing something like a guild through which they can receive new plot threads and work in replacement PCs in case of death or retirement. I'm gonna try to weave some of the modules together into a connected narrative with minor rewrites but to keep it from being too linear they'll get tips on new directions to investigate both during missions and from people seeking them out at home base
You complete my fate
The world unwinds inside of me...
"Oh, Marge, alignment is just a suggestion, like pants!"
Rip, a DM that thinks Lawful Good means Lawful Stupid. We love that 🙄
Running a game that is a fully party-drive storyline is HARD as a DM. But it's also some of the most engaging D&D I've ever played. The trick is to fully design the first session and end it with giving the players a lot of opportunities and information, and the question: "Where do you go next?" and the answer to that is what you prep for the next session. Rinse and repeat.
Literally having an empty world is NOT how you accomplish a party-driven storyline.
3:25 isn't that the beginning of Divinity Original Sin 2? Okay, if they landed on an island with a fort... you know what? It would be better if the dm did stole Divinity's history.
Nooo don't do my girl Harrowhark like this ;;
Don't put my girl Harrow there she suffered enough :C
"NEXT SESSION... SHALL BE DIFFERENT!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
...
"IT'S NOT DIFFERENT AT ALL! IS IT, STEVE!?"
We've had a few campaigns fizzle from getting lost in the sandbox but we mostly move on to a different campaign by consensus
just a heads up to any would be sandbox campaign dms. random encounter tables are your friend. having most of the encounters on that table be non combative is your friend.
The repeated "I don't like sand" killed me
CRISPY ANOTHER MALAPORPISM (by OP) 7:41 said “exasperated” went they meant “exacerbated” :D
I run a homebrew campaign where I have my own plan and linear timeline, but i run it as a sandbox because sometimes later I get really cool ideas I want to put in, or my players do something that changes the course of the whole campaign. It’s so fun.
Crispy: This is no place for a moral discussion.
Me: Isn’t this whole channel a moral discussion?!🤣
Harrowhark is a terrible example for the thumbnail XD
Hello is so generic.
You gotta do:
[teleports behind you] Oh hi
0:31 That escalated quickly
Two of the primary systems I play in are ones that emphasize the world building outwards from characters and how they interact with it as well as their interaction with the world affecting how the characters change and progress so sandbox style games are no stranger to me and I like them a lot. I suppose I understand the appeal of wanting to 'breath of the wild' you're players but I don't understand thinking that you don't have to give them *something* to do. Even if it's just like a few quests or NPCs at the start for them to follow into something else.
Open sandbox games are fine but my god you still have to give them somewhere to start their exploration.
intro story: yeesh. Dodged a bullet? More like dodged a nuke. I've had an experience or two on a game's official discord server where I was insulted for asking a "stupid question" and then gaslighted for "not being able to a take a joke". Again, OP dodged a nuke by bailing on what sounded like a VERY toxic cesspool.
Cowboy self-insert: build up of world-ending entities... with no pay off allowed... EVER. I swear, that has to be the DnD equivalent of getting C-blocked or beaver dammed.
Any lawful follows the law of the land. The good interpret that law towards the good of others. The evil use the law to their own ends.
Good = cares about others, may sacrifice own goals for others
Evil = selfish, doesn't care much for others. Can sacrifice own goals for others in rare situations
Being good doesn't make you a killjoy
Being evil doesn't mean you have no friends and kill every baby you see... That's chaotic stupid evil on a rampage
In Ad&d, alignment was detectable with spells. People didn't read the descriptions of those spells. An character radiated their when doing acts that fit. Unless you were high level due to pursuing aligned acts. Such as a high level murder cleric. Or high level paladin who never swayed from his path.
Alignment went so wrong it's become nearly nothing
Randy quitting and the table not knowing what to do come back to the same problem, no damn rails. Polite, stretchable rails are necessary.
After the second instance, I’d stop trying to play the character, i would just ask the dm what my character does for everything.
I love sandbox games. But they require SO MUCH prepping. The only difference is you prep week to week, rather than long term prepping. BIG DOWNSIDE, you have to prep far more overall. You don't know where they are going, you need to be prepared for them to do something totally abstract each week.
The fact that he says:
Hawaii instead of "why"
Juan instead of "one"
Huat instead of "what"
Is hilarious 😂
"I'm gonna make a sandbox game!"
"Oh that sounds unique I'll play"
"You're in a giant empty sandbox."
".......Hol up"
The Lawful Good DM was forcing them to play Lawful Stupid
When referring to alignment, realistically even the most evil person can do something good that doesn’t benefit them. And even someone who is good can crack and do something evil. Alignment is something that guides your characters, not something that should confine and bound them.
that one dm that forces the player on how to play a lawful good character is annoying. (I personally love having alignment, mainly for myself to know roughly what may or may not make sense, I never force it upon someone unless they don't know what their character might do.
Hang the rules, they're more like guidelines anyway 😅 that quote was all I could hear when you said that
That feeling, when the Lawful Stupid character is forced on the player by the DM. Seriously, what the fuck is up with that Aasimar story?!
Independently of how awful the story about literal sandbox turned out to be, from the beginning I've catched the hugest player red flag from the interaction:
DM "By the way, playing an elven race (specially a high elf) would be pretty roughly, everyone hates them for plot reasons that i plan to reveal later on as you play" -> Player completely ignores the warning and the worldbouilding and decides he has to play an elf because that's the preconceived idea he had prior to character creation with the dm, demands to be told things he's already been told the characters are supposed to discover as they play the campaing, and proceeds to complain about this situation he single-handedly made for himself.
Opening story reminds me that a friend long ago got kicked from an RP Server because the people there expected purple prose level paragraph long sentences from characters during roleplay and got salty at them giving simple greetings or short responses. I think perhaps people like that believe they're being clever, but they come off like they own a stinky cheeto dust laden fedora.
Every world has boring spots, even fantasy ones but you got to make sure that your players get away from there again soon if they manage to get lost in one. Who just strands their players on the most boring beach in the multiverse?!
Mary Sue Gunslinger, Love your vids
1st: Was quite confusing. I mean if they came in like a trainwreck, cussing like a sailor or some kind of rude joke...sure I could see that...but a simple hello...the hell is wrong with them? XD
2nd: Its fine if you have a sandbox game...but your players have to be in on it...why not just play one of those survival games? Guess we know why he didn't talk about his elf lore...no elves in sight.
4th: so DM forced a lawful stupid...guy should really read the "Book of Exalted Deeds." Completely took away player agency. Celestials are good, yes. However they range from L, C and N depending on which plane you came from. But seriously...read the Book of Exalted Deeds, its a handy book for good alignment things., especially when it comes to the heavens.
Poeple act like the "farewell" thing is weird but one day our boy is gunna tell someone "goodbye" and brake them
Props to ginny for pretty damn impressive impersonations.
Great video. But lets be honest D4 is the worst.
This is why I don’t like how dnd does alignment. I feel like a sliding scale based on actions taken like in fable and Star Wars games where your characters moral perception is based on the decisions they made, rather than some character trait assigned during their creation. It feels more realistic.
I keep it in alignments but I am aware that you don't have to play it symmetricly. Ex. Once you are good, once you are lawful. If it happens that your decision is both great. It's more one the other? Good.
You are True neutral? Sweet be as balanced as you can be or play fast and loose as long as universe checkbook stays 0
I tend to be a bit picky about social norms myself possibly due to my neurodivergence, usually because I hear or see a few things as like, empty formalities more than anything. "Hello." obviously not so much, but I would prefer if people said more than that because sometimes starting a conversation purely off of the exchange of formalities can be difficult. The only one I genuinely gripe about is "GG" because I can't tell if it's sarcastic sometimes.
Sandbox to a ridiculous degree
Yeah, that last one I stopped believing about the time the lawyer appeared and claimed he could personally issue criminal harassment charges against the strawman bigot.
Remember, Sonic the hedgehog, the TNMT, and Batman are all typical Lawful Good.
South Park has ruined the name 'Randy' for me. I just straight up think of Stan's Dad. "Oh, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I thought this was America!"
It's Lawful Good in "Good by Law" whatever is deemed good defined by laws.
Not Selfsacreficial and Everyone else befor myself.
That guy basically made Minecraft Peaceful Mode the TTRPG
Honestly, the player of the last story were either gifted with a saint's patience or complete idiots - I would have exploded. And this comes from someone who had more than his fair share of wannabe railroaders in his life, with the only difference that none of us were going to just take it passively; whether by pulling the snark up to eleven, having the characters become suicidal or turning ourselves (me in particular) into bona fide minmaxers, we would force them to drag us kicking and screaming along their goddamn railroad.
I largely dislike chaotic neutral, and that story sure didn't help. x)
Obviously, I don’t personally know the DM in the “lawful good” story, but I have enough personal experience with amoral nihilistic jackasses to say I suspect that DM was just one of those and in general had a chip on his shoulder against good alignments.
Alignment is a useless system with no mechanical function and you're better off without it. Give your character an actual personality. Alignments don't have an objective definition, and if you ask 5 people what Alignment Batman or Wolverine are you might even get 5 different answers. Alignment is terrible at defining anything about a character. It has no use in modern games, and other games don't have it, because you don't need it at all. I haven't played in a game that uses Alignment in over 10 years and we don't miss it and it has never had any effect on our games that we don't use it. It's useless.