Dropping alignments out of the game

[weenie]

Has anyone ever played or considered playing in a game without the alignment system?

Me and some friends were talking about it a couple days ago, and as far as I'm concerned, they don't bring anything new to the game, but impose restrictions to the roleplay aspect of the game, thus I've decided I'll completely drop the alignment system out of all my further games.

What are your thoughts on it?

[Kurald Galain]

I've been playing without alignment for about a decade now. I think it's a big improvement that way.

And yes, even 3E is easy to do without alignment rules.

[KIDS]

A very good choice, imo. You'll avoid a heap of misunderstandings. However, some spells based on alignment might be problems (obviously detect evil wouldn't exist, but unholy blight, dictum and similar spells have varied and partial effects... or drop them as well).

[BobVosh]

I like WW's "alignments" for exalted.

However, unfortunatly, for D&D the alignments are kinda crucial. Demons/devils don't make sense without them, paladins lose more abilities (which are weak enough as is), and things like chaos hammer are lost forever. If you just make alignments more into archtypes and use them loosly it mostly works.

[The Minx]

If the alignments were designed smartly, they could be made to work, but only if the design were customized to fit a particular theme that the group had decided on before play begins. As a universal system that is always in force they are more trouble than they are worth.

[Tengu_temp]

Has anyone ever played or considered playing in a game without the alignment system?


Everyone who plays RPGs other than DND does so constantly.

Do that. The alignment system is a relic. Just modify the elements when it comes out in mechanics, but that's easy - for example, paladins now can smite anything, and their evildar now detects clerics of evil deities, demons and other such things.

[Kurald Galain]

However, unfortunatly, for D&D the alignments are kinda crucial.
No, that's just what they want you to think. Seriously: alignment was pretty much junked entirely for 4E, and nobody misses it.


Demons/devils don't make sense without them
Yes they do, the only thing that doesn't make sense is the Blood War. Now think about how many campaigns involve the Blood War in the first place.


paladins lose more abilities (which are weak enough as is)
No, just turn Smite Evil into Smite Undead Or Demon, or perhaps Smite Person I Don't Like, or replace it by some appropriate cleric spell as a SLA.


things like chaos hammer are lost forever.
I doubt anybody will miss that.

If you turn alignment into archetypes, you get perennial debate (like on these message boards) about what those archetypes are. Alignment doesn't add anything but repetitive discussion.

[The Minx]

Yes they do, the only thing that doesn't make sense is the Blood War. Now think about how many campaigns involve the Blood War in the first place

You can, in fact, still include the Blood War if you want: just assume two races of fiends fighting for supremacy in the evil outer planes. It's not really that far-fetched.

Just say that one is much more numerous, the other is much more organized. You don't really need an abstract concept like "alignment" here either. In fact, that would allow you to develop and focus on other aspects of their respective characters.

[Morty]

Yes they do, the only thing that doesn't make sense is the Blood War. Now think about how many campaigns involve the Blood War in the first place.


How so? Demons and devils can be mortal enemies even if they don't have big Law/Chaos labels.

[Kurald Galain]

You can, in fact, still include the Blood War if you want:

Good point, actually. Okay then, demons and devils make just as much sense with alignment as without it.

[Morty]

Well, when it comes to cosmology, philosophies and all that, D&D alignment system works okay. It's when it's applied to individuals it fails horribly.

[Grey Watcher]

Well, when it comes to cosmology, philosophies and all that, D&D alignment system works okay. It's when it's applied to individuals it fails horribly.

I'm not entirely with you on that one. Regardless of scale, Law and Chaos, in particular, suffer from poor definitions that aren't even necessarily mutually exclusive. And what little the cosmology brings to the table on the subject of Good and Evil is ripped out of a World Mythologies textbook anyway. I dunno, the Law/Chaos/Good/Evil alignments system looks good at a casual glance, and has a nice symmetry to it, but it's not handled terribly well in the game's literature.

Overall, yeah, I think alignments are very easily dropped. There are plenty of common houserules out there for dealing with the mechanical implications.

For Paladins, in particular, I recommend:

You can change the Paladin's Anti-Evil powers (Detect and Smite Evil) to either powers that work by type (Detect/Smite Undead, for example), or just make it a generic Smite. I also recommend Discern Lies in place of Detect Evil, even in games where you ARE using alignments. It fulfills a similar fluff roles (gives the Paladin a heads up on potential bad dealings) without being quite as abusable as a license to kill.

[toasty]

I haven't bothered to pay attention to aligements in any of my games. My pcs tend to end up amoral or evil though. I'm not sure why... ;)

[valadil]

Alignment works when it's an afterthought to a character rather than its base. I like to come up with a complete personality before I even begin to think about stats. When I first look at the character sheet I notice the alignment section and can figure out an alignment based on the character I have in mind. Of course I don't think alignment is necessary aside from certain spells and effects.

[Darrin]

Has anyone ever played or considered playing in a game without the alignment system?


It's possible, and when I started my current campaign I intentionally decided to rip out the alignment system mostly because it just irks me. I wanted to run a game where the bad guys weren't always bad, characters could switch sides, and motivation/intention was more important than what your "aura" looked like.

The biggest problem with taking out alignment is the spell descriptors, particularly the chaos/law/good/evil domains. You have to remove or radically change some spells, particularly protection from [blah]. I made it just a general protection from people trying to kill me, which is probably a bit too powerful, but no one has ever bothered to cast it. No one's asked about stuff like Chaos Hammer, Word of Law, etc.

Alignment-based DR and weapon enhancements are also a problem, but it hasn't come up yet... DR can be switched to stuff like DR/X magic + cold iron or DR/X magic + adamantine. Aligned weapons is still a bit of a problem, but I've been tinkering with replacing the +2d6 damage with similar +2 enhancements. For example, a Good weapon could become a Merciful or Disrupting weapon. Evil = Vicious or Vampiric, Law = Banishing or Paralyzing, Chaos = Blurstrike or Transmuting.

Paladin was the only class that really needed to be overhauled for alignment reasons. Smite Evil became Smite Enemy (Who Hath Been Naughty In My Sight), Detect Evil became Detect Undead, and they get a "Discern Lies" ability similar to the "Gaze of Truth" Paladin Variant in Dragon #349.

Most of the bad guys I've been throwing at my PCs have been aberrations, so demons/devils hasn't really come up, other than one of the important NPCs is a tiefling. The major bad guys are all very Cthulhu-esque Elder Evil type stuff who are so far beyond petty alignment descriptors that you shouldn't need an [evil] tag to know it's a bad idea to screw around with them.

[Person_Man]

I've found that it works fine either way.

Alignments can help people who are new to roleplaying. And for veterans, it sometimes feels weird not to have an alignment. (In fact, I mentally assign alignments to my co-workers and extended family. You'd be surprised at how it makes interacting with them easier).

Basically the only real concern is that you're screwing the Paladin or other builds that rely on Smite Evil or other alignment related powers. I just hand wave it away and convert it to Smite Opposition.

[Neithan]

I like to have alignment in a form, that makes sense to me and the campaigns I run.
- Helping others without direct benefit is good, causing people harm for your own benefit is evil.
- Listening to your guts is chaotic, follow logic even though you don't like it is lawful.
Detect alignment works only on outsiders, undead and priests. It detects alignment in normal mortals only if their mind is currently highly occupied with something that would be clearly good/evil/chaotic/lawful, like sneaking on the king with a drawn blade or emotionally defying the completly legal descision of the council.
The campaign world has no outer planes and no alignment domains.

Alignment does apply for being burned when touching a sacred magical item or being repelled by a magic ward.
Every player has his characters act like he wants to. The gm decides how magical effects apply to a character.
Works well for me so far.

[Prometheus]

I keep alignment, but that's generally because it isn't a big issue in my D&D campaigns. It certainly makes multiclassing easier to plan - but I would keep the same caviat that your build has to make sense conceptually as well.

The Smite Opposition, Protection from Hostile Intent spells simple enough, but you have to decide if there is anyone that the spell could be used on who wouldn't qualify (as a Paladin might encounter when trying to defeat, say, a Slaad). Smite Unnatural where unnatural is Undead, Oozes, Aberration would be an alternative, much like you could have Protection from Unnatural and Protection from Extraplanar.

[Mastikator]

I'd say keep alignment, but they only apply to supernatural stuff, like cosmology and magic. Mortals don't have alignment (unless they are clerics with domain alignment, or something similar).

Instead, mortals have "personality traits", like "jolly" or "easy to anger" or "greedy", which have zero mechanic and only serve as guidelines for how your character's personality works. And if your character starts acting unlike his personality trait, change the trait, if he does it often add "erratic" :p

[CthulhuM]

I'm fond of the solution I've been using in my own campaign - replace all alignment-related mechanical effects with deity-related. If something detects evil, it now detects things your god dislikes. If something has DR/Evil or DR/Good it now just has DR/Divine, which is overcome by spells or weapons pledged to gods who disapprove of that type of creature (godpledged is a +2 enhancement that works the same way as holy/unholy/etc.). Magic effects not generated by a god that reference alignment generally just don't exist.

The point is, it allows you to essentially avoid tearing out large portions of the mechanics (which you would have to do if you wanted to remove alignment entirely) while simultaneously sidestepping all the ridiculous "what exactly is good/evil/lawful/chaotic" arguments and the restrictive roleplaying that can come with them. This way you don't have to worry about if a particular bit of alignment-related chicanery is "fair" or whether or not it would be reasonable in the real world - it all comes down to what a given god thinks of a given situation, and the gods don't always have to be reasonable.

That said, we haven't really had any of the usual alignment speed bumps anyway - we have no pallies in the group, a shugenja instead of a cleric, and, while there are definitely some nice people and some not-so-nice people in the group, the party's overriding goal is of the "stop horrors from beyond reality from eating it" variety, which is something pretty much everyone can get behind when it comes down to it. So if your groups routinely contain both Pelor-worshiping paladins and self-serving, backstabbing, thieving-from-the-party rogues... well it probably won't solve your problems (though it may make adjudicating them less of a DM-headache).

[Galathir]

Our current campaign (3.75ish) doesn't use alignment and I rather like it. At leat in my experience, alignment had fairly limited use and I always saw it as more of a way to help people roleplay their character then anything else. I would still use a good-evil axis, but the chaotic-lawful axis never really made much sense anyway. Paladins aren't allowed in our group anyway, so it's not really much of an issue.

[RukiTanuki]

Alignment went the way of multiclass penalties in my 3.x game: completely disregarded, with nary a word for its passing.

My players didn't really use the alignment-related spells, so only the Paladin needed a quick fix:
* Detect Evil became a passive "spidey-sense" that pinged when anything was intending to lay ill will in the party's general direction. If the Paladin got weirded out, the party put themselves on guard.
* Smite Evil became Smite Opponent and worked on anything hostile.

One possible replacement would have been to use something similar to the Taint system, and allow alignment spells to work on those adequately tainted by the deity's greatest foe.

[Lert, A.]

I don't use it either.

The complaint of having to rework so much mechanics is pretty much bogus if a group uses any sort of homebrewing whatsoever, since you can choose either to just rip out offending spells altogether or just make them universal.

If there is still a problem, have players choose an affiliation or a set of goals that they choose to live by. Alignment of opponents is determined by hwhether or not they actively resist the plans of the player.

[Kantolin]

I, for one, have never had most applications of alignment do anything resembling 'limiting my roleplaying'.

What we've house ruled out are most of the nonsensical alignment limitations on classes (Bards can't be lawful, monks can't be chaotic), and then just played normally. Those bother me more than most other things, and the vast majority of them can be erased with wild abandon.

If it turns out the character I'm playing is actually lawful neutral, that's easily remedied: Write 'lawful neutral' on the character sheet and move on. For the few classes that matter, the remedy is to make a code/lifestyle that focuses on actions that would get you your abilities in the first place. After all, regardless of alignment existing or not, doing things like wanton slaughter of babies is not going to win your Cleric any points with Pelor.

So meh. Some people see alignment as some sort of restriction, while others try as hard as they can to play chaotic neutral/evil monsters that slaughter everything and are irritated that their DM made them put 'Neutral good' on their character sheet.

[Nefarion Xid]

In 3.5, we swapped out "Good and Evil" for "Benevolent and Malevolent" descriptors instead. And nixed Lawful/Chaos for any mechanical purposes, but kept them around to describe ethical views.

Further, spells that functioned based on alignment only applied to the current emotional state of the target. Anger, hatred, greed and the like were called Malevolent...and serenity, happiness etc were Benevolent.

So, Detect Evil essentially turned into emotional radar. Paladins were transformed from stick-up-bum holy warriors into Jedi. Instead of hunting down evil, they were more concerned with their own dignity and composure and were constantly on guard to keep their emotions at bay. Likewise, their Smite ability only worked on targets who were acting out of anger at the moment. It was loads of fun.

[hamishspence]

in 2nd ed, a lot of the time, Detect evil was a bit like that- unless the evil person was concentrating on doing evil, it did not detect them unless they were, say, Outsider or Evil Priest.

[Doomsy]

Alignment was originally put into the game as a rough roleplaying guide, more or less, for a generation unfamiliar with the unconcept. It has been carried on through the editions more out of a sense of tradition than anything else. You don't really need it and most new games don't have it for good cause.

[Bryn]

Yep, I do this when I play DnD, 3.5 or 4e (and quite possibly 2e as well if I had it).

Just seeing the flamewars spawned from alignment is enough - everyone has a different opinion about what fits into what category, which is fine when each character also has a different opinion in-game, but makes things messy when you start decreeing that Ambiguous Action X is universally Evil, Good, etc. The biggest problem is perhaps the Lawful/Chaotic axis - so much confusion arises from this...

In terms of mechanics... Paladins can smite anyone, which is handy for inquisitor types (one of my favourite sorts of characters as a Warhammer player) - though I don't think any of my players ever play a Paladin anyway, and I prefer to use the Crusader. Detect [Whatever] pretty much vanishes. Protection from [Whatever] spells are folded into one Protection spell which applies equally against everyone. Spells which target an alignment often work on everyone except in some specific cases which I would rule on if they came up :smallwink:

Setting-wise, alignment is rarely an issue. Eberron does not heavily feature alignments for its nations, Warhammer 40k ranges from evil to very evil so the system is irrelevant there, and my homebrew settings rarely (never) look at a fight between good and evil.

If a game does have alignment, though... no worries. I just prefer to go without it.

[Tacoma]

It surely helps that in reality, alignment doesn't exist. Marketing exists. And everyone uses it to show how they are the Good people and those others are the Evil people.

[ericgrau]

It mostly affects spells and supernatural abilities, as pointed out.

I would do one of two things on each ability:
1. Make it apply only against exemplery evil/good. Such as a demon or evil artifact, not just a "bad guy". Note that the creature's personal beliefs could be anything even if he's an "evil" creature. This should have interesting results. I think detect evil goes here, for example.
2. Make it apply against all creatures. In most campaigns 90% of enemies are supposed to be the opposite alignment anyway, so this shouldn't have much balance effect. I think smite evil goes here, for example. Just call it "smite" instead.

[LordZarth]

That's stupid.

Sure, do away with the system, but that's completely arbitrary. Alignment will still be there. Alignment is not arbitrary.

Just like in real life and in D&D swords hurt, humans can't see in the dark, and children cannot jump three thousand feet, people will always be Lawful Good, Neutral, etc.

Think about it. There will always be the nice people in the world who go out of their way to help: Good. Within these, there's the people who try to help but don't give a **** about authority. There'll always be the sort who honestly don't give a **** at all--they'll do what's useful for them, and they don't want Cthulhu living next door, but they're True Neutral.

There will always be the utter ***holes who go around killing, raping, or stealing for fun--Evil.

Sure, you could scrap the system, change the names, whatever, but it won't leave your game.

[horseboy]

Everyone who plays RPGs other than DND does so constantly.Well, there's still the people who play Rifts, and those three guys playing Synnabar, but yeah, I haven't used it in....crap...16 to 20 years.

No, just turn Smite Evil into Smite Undead Or Demon, or perhaps Smite Person I Don't Like, or replace it by some appropriate cleric spell as a SLA.
I'm fond of "Smite Infidel" and "Smite Heretic" myself. Not enough heretic smiting in games now a days. Crap now I have to go build an Inquisitor warband.

[Tacoma]

Alignment can leave your game. I've found players seem to equalize around what I'd call a CN or N action set when alignment is removed. They have their good moments, but they also have their selfish moments. And their actions sometimes bring a lot of misery and hardship to others.

The problem of alignment is just that. Everyone has moments during their lives when their actions could be defined as one alignment or the next. And in reality nobody actually has an alignment. There isn't a label you're trying to work within. Instead of your label restricting your actions, your actions define your label.

Do bad things? Then you're labeled as Evil. But maybe not by everyone: by many you might be labeled Good. Intelligent folk will say you're Complicated, and as any human you cannot be pigeonholed into one of nine categories that define your existence.

A good student might become a war hero, and might go on to either lead the country or become a diplomat or become a spokesman for a tire company. And later it might be found that he committed war atrocities against the enemy. But during his later life he devoted himself to charity and peace and learning. And upon dying he might leave a legacy of misery for some and prosperity and light for others. This man is not Good or Evil. He is human.

EDIT: Chilling effect of forum rules caused self-censorship.

[Nerd-o-rama]

That's stupid.

Sure, do away with the system, but that's completely arbitrary. Alignment will still be there. Alignment is not arbitrary.

Just like in real life and in D&D swords hurt, humans can't see in the dark, and children cannot jump three thousand feet, people will always be Lawful Good, Neutral, etc.

Think about it. There will always be the nice people in the world who go out of their way to help: Good. Within these, there's the people who try to help but don't give a **** about authority. There'll always be the sort who honestly don't give a **** at all--they'll do what's useful for them, and they don't want Cthulhu living next door, but they're True Neutral.

There will always be the utter ***holes who go around killing, raping, or stealing for fun--Evil.

Sure, you could scrap the system, change the names, whatever, but it won't leave your game.Oh, sure, people will still be good and evil. We just won't have to pigeonhole every person and action in the entire game into nine neat little categories for the sake of the rules.

[Eldariel]

Most importantly, without alignment, you don't force every action a character takes to be of one alignment or another. You can be kind to some people and absolutely cruel to others. If you're just around the people you're kind to, you'd be labelled "good" (as nobody knows you don't like X), but immediately when you meet someone you don't like, you'd suddenly switch alignment. People do good, evil, chaotic, lawful and neutral actions constantly. Just about everyone does all types all the time. If we're portraying natural D&D characters, they'd do all of those all the time too. I mean, just look at Batman; you could call him everything from Lawful Good ('cause he has his own morale code he strictly adheres to and is extremely composed, controlled and goes to great lengths for preparation; and he protects people who owe him nothing for no price) to Chaotic Evil ('cause he's a vigilante beyond law who'd let people die rather than give himself in, who cares nothing for the means he needs to use to reach an end, and who's really only letting out a personal vendetta in taking out criminals).

[Zeful]

In 3.5, we swapped out "Good and Evil" for "Benevolent and Malevolent" descriptors instead. And nixed Lawful/Chaos for any mechanical purposes, but kept them around to describe ethical views.

Further, spells that functioned based on alignment only applied to the current emotional state of the target. Anger, hatred, greed and the like were called Malevolent...and serenity, happiness etc were Benevolent.

So, Detect Evil essentially turned into emotional radar. Paladins were transformed from stick-up-bum holy warriors into Jedi. Instead of hunting down evil, they were more concerned with their own dignity and composure and were constantly on guard to keep their emotions at bay. Likewise, their Smite ability only worked on targets who were acting out of anger at the moment. It was loads of fun.

That's kinda cool actually.

[Devils_Advocate]

Sure, do away with the system, but that's completely arbitrary. Alignment will still be there. Alignment is not arbitrary.
The problem with alignments isn't that they don't mean anything so much as that they mean several mutally exclusive things.

To quote from the Tome of Fiends (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28828&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&sid=dd5679bcf89301d61aa23d0c3c4749a2):
Every action has motivations, expectable results, and actual results. In addition, every action can be described with a verb. In the history of moral theory (a history substantively longer than human history) it has at times been contested by otherwise bright individuals that any of those (singly or collectively) could be used as a rubric to determine the rightness of an action. D&D authors agreed. With all of those extremely incompatible ideas. And the result has been an unmitigated catastrophe. Noone knows what makes an action Good in D&D, so your group is ultimately going to have to decide for yourselves. Is your action Good because your intentions are Good? Is your action Good because the most likely result of your action is Good? Is your action Good because the actual end result of that action is Good? Is your action Good because the verb that bests describes your action is in general Good? There are actually some very good arguments for all of these written by people like Jeremy Bentham, Immanuel Kant, and David Wasserman – but there are many other essays that are so astoundingly contradictory and ill-reasoned that they are of less help than reading nothing. Unfortunately for the hobby, some of the essays of the second type were written by Gary Gygax.

This is not an easy question to answer. The rulebooks, for example, are no help at all. D&D at its heart is about breaking into other peoples' homes, stabbing them in the face, and taking all their money. That's very hard to rationalize as a Good thing to do, and the authors of D&D have historically not tried terribly hard.
A course of action may fit the descriptions of several alignments at once. You can run into a village of goblins that's been raiding your human village and starting killin' goblins. You're killing, you're risking your own safety to protect others, and you're supporting one side of a conflict based on personal commitments to others. So is that Evil, Good, Neutral, all of the above, none of the above, or other? The core rules do not explain how to sort this out at all. The supplemental rules that are supposed to clarify this are so dumb that they actually make the situation worse. (Using poison and disease against your enemies is Evil! Here are some special poisons and diseases for Good characters to use against Evil creatures!)

"Good", "Evil", "Law", and "Chaos" are just not each consistently used to mean exactly one thing. There are all sorts of particulars that the actual designers of the game themselves clearly didn't form any consensus on. Then there's the inherently stupid stuff, like how the Law/Chaos axis as written only even makes sense under the ridiculous assumption that everyone's level of honesty is directly proportional to his respect for authority.

Alignment is so poorly designed, described, implemented, and understood that it really is easier to remove it entirely than it is to fix it. It only actually works with clarifying house rules. I don't mean that it doesn't work well without house rules, I mean that it doesn't function at all until you decide how to actually implement it, because the PHB itself does not provide a means of implementation. It's possible for some groups to form a consensus on alignment so naturally that they don't even realize that they're using a bunch of implicit house rules that are absolutely necessary to even use alignment at all. That's fine if you can swing it, but in other groups things can wind up working -- or rather, not working -- in pretty much exactly the opposite way.

Edit: As an example of the sort of thing I'm talking about? You've pretty clearly decided that Good and Evil are a matter of motivation. The alignment section of the rules, on the other hand, tells us that "Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient." So according to that, you don't have to do Evil deeds for the sake of hurting others to be Evil-aligned.

... and then the Monster Manual routinely tells you how each of its Evil creatures is downright mean, and includes supposedly Neutral things like wyverns and blue slaadi that will casually slaughter the hell out of you and are pretty clearly more Evil than a typical assassin is expected to be.

There's just no consistency.

[Eldariel]

And once you do clarify alignment, either no character can fall enough into any alignment group to actually be aligned one way or another, or it becomes so prohibitive that combined with the mechanical consequences of an alignment, many classes and items and such are suddenly entirely unmakeable/stupid:
-What do you mean my Law-abiding/ahead-planning barbarian (as in, a tribal nomad) can't get angry?
-What do you mean my law-indifferent/mentally normal (as opposed to composed) member of monastic order can't be a Monk?
-What do you mean Bards have to be at least indifferent towards law while Rogues are free to go either way?
-Does my Paladin have to follow a superior's order he considers injust, or his own intuition? What if there was something behind those orders he didn't know when he didn't follow them and did the more harm by going with his intuition? What if the superior was actually corrupt, but he followed their orders anyways? What if any choice leads to the slaughter of billions with no notable difference in the outcome?

And if you define law/chaos and good/evil axis as how your mind works (that is, are you composed/uncomposed - altruistic/egoistic) rather than what the motives of your actions are, what does it really mean besides making all chaotic characters die a horrible death 'cause they never planned ahead, along with all good characters living in a not-fully-good community? In such sense, your actions aren't really aligned, only the way your mind works.

[Samurai Jill]

The problem with alignments isn't that they don't mean anything so much as that they mean several mutally exclusive things.

To quote from the Tome of Fiends (http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28828&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&sid=dd5679bcf89301d61aa23d0c3c4749a2):
Every action has motivations, expectable results, and actual results. In addition, every action can be described with a verb. In the history of moral theory (a history substantively longer than human history) it has at times been contested by otherwise bright individuals that any of those (singly or collectively) could be used as a rubric to determine the rightness of an action. D&D authors agreed. With all of those extremely incompatible ideas. And the result has been an unmitigated catastrophe. Noone knows what makes an action Good in D&D, so your group is ultimately going to have to decide for yourselves. Is your action Good because your intentions are Good? Is your action Good because the most likely result of your action is Good? Is your action Good because the actual end result of that action is Good? Is your action Good because the verb that bests describes your action is in general Good? There are actually some very good arguments for all of these written by people like Jeremy Bentham, Immanuel Kant, and David Wasserman – but there are many other essays that are so astoundingly contradictory and ill-reasoned that they are of less help than reading nothing. Unfortunately for the hobby, some of the essays of the second type were written by Gary Gygax.

This is not an easy question to answer. The rulebooks, for example, are no help at all. D&D at its heart is about breaking into other peoples' homes, stabbing them in the face, and taking all their money. That's very hard to rationalize as a Good thing to do, and the authors of D&D have historically not tried terribly hard.
A course of action may fit the descriptions of several alignments at once. You can run into a village of goblins that's been raiding your human village and starting killin' goblins. You're killing, you're risking your own safety to protect others, and you're supporting one side of a conflict based on personal commitments to others. So is that Evil, Good, Neutral, all of the above, none of the above, or other? The core rules do not explain how to sort this out at all. The supplemental rules that are supposed to clarify this are so dumb that they actually make the situation worse. (Using poison and disease against your enemies is Evil! Here are some special poisons and diseases for Good characters to use against Evil creatures!)

"Good", "Evil", "Law", and "Chaos" are just not each consistently used to mean exactly one thing. There are all sorts of particulars that the actual designers of the game themselves clearly didn't form any consensus on. Then there's the inherently stupid stuff, like how the Law/Chaos axis as written only even makes sense under the ridiculous assumption that everyone's level of honesty is directly proportional to his respect for authority.

Alignment is so poorly designed, described, implemented, and understood that it really is easier to remove it entirely than it is to fix it. It only actually works with clarifying house rules. I don't mean that it doesn't work well without house rules, I mean that it doesn't function at all until you decide how to actually implement it, because the PHB itself does not provide a means of implementation. It's possible for some groups to form a consensus on alignment so naturally that they don't even realize that they're using a bunch of implicit house rules that are absolutely necessary to even use alignment at all. That's fine if you can swing it, but in other groups things can wind up working -- or rather, not working -- in pretty much exactly the opposite way.

I agree on pretty much every single point you make, and applaud enthusiastically the people who went to such effort to dissect the whole mess.

However, I did actually try to take a stab at fixing it: Accounting for your Alignment (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95858)

[Kizara]

Easier solution:

Be mature roleplayers, use them for the guidelines that they are, and inspirations and motivations for your roleplaying.


Don't do what most people that think the system is crap do:

"I am NG, thus I must act like this, and my defination of this is different from everybody else's and now we can argue about it."

Do what is natural and intuitive:

1) Think about alignment briefly at CharGen. Does it jump out and strike you what your character's alignment is? Is it a huge facet of their personality?

If no, write nothing on your sheet, 'cause it hasn't been determined yet. If you must, write neutral.

2) RP your character for a couple sessions. Think about their ethics, flesh out their quirks and such. Now, you probably conclude that their actions is in keeping with the tenants of one of the alignments.

Maybe your fellow players also might comment "Wow, your character is really LG, maybe you should consider taking levels in paladin. You really seem gong-ho on crusading against evil." or perhaps "You are very coniving, selfish and ambitious. You seem to use every situation to your advantage, yet keep a sense of honor and class about you. You really epitomize LE to me." Yes, people don't talk exactly like that, but you get the idea. Don't nitpick the example.

3) Write what you feel your alignment is on your sheet, based on #2. Now, use that guideline to help give a grounding in the future if you are uncertain how your character would act/react and how he might feel about something. Read the alignment description, and in so far as it applies to you, think of how you can bring that out in your RPing.


But no, don't get super caught-up on it. Even if your playing a Paladin, you shouldn't be "Code-Lawyered" by people and if you can't feel the character in your heart and feel your alignment/code is restrictive, you are playing the wrong class TBH.


In summary:

Alignment: A useful RP tool for players if you don't use it like its a stick to beat people with until they conform. Don't Code-Lawyer people, roleplay.

[Saph]

I'm always a bit bemused by the hatin' so many people have for alignment, because I can honestly say I've never had it be a problem for our games even once. Sure, we'll sometimes disagree on what's Good and what's Evil, but it's all good-humoured, and if it gets deadlocked the DM makes a ruling and play goes on.

For the most part players pick an alignment for their character that they feel best describes the personality they've come up with, and stick with it. Occasionally the DM will point out that they're not exactly living up to it, but I don't see that as a problem - it's just another way of pointing out that a character isn't following the ethical code they claim to be. Usually the player adjusts their behaviour a bit, on rare occasions they decide to change alignment. (Good to Neutral is by far the most common shift.)

Besides, good and evil are major hooks for a sizable minority of players. It can really get people engaged. Just look at the number of posts alignment threads spawn. :P

- Saph

[Samurai Jill]

What I meant to suggest is that, if you're going to have alignment in your games, then for the love of Gods: DEFINE your terms and expectations, make sure they are objective, and make sure they are practically workable. The terms 'Good', 'Evil', 'Law' and 'Chaos', left to themselves, are hopelessly ambiguous and laden with implied value-judgements that lead to acrimony and party conflict.

In other words, if all you want to do is consistently role-play, then you don't really need the alignment system in the first place. It might not get in the way, but then again it might, so why take the risk? The only compelling reason to have the alignment system is if you want to go about changing your alignment during play, applying penalties or bonuses or career opportunities accordingly, and for that, you need a little more bookkeeping.

[Saph]

What I meant to suggest is that, if you're going to have alignment in your games, then for the love of Gods: DEFINE your terms and expectations, make sure they are objective, and make sure they are practically workable. The terms 'Good', 'Evil', 'Law' and 'Chaos', left to themselves, are hopelessly ambiguous and laden with implied value-judgements that lead to acrimony and party conflict.

I don't go out of my way to define them. None of my other DMs do, either. It hasn't caused any acrimony or party conflict.

It's easy to overreact to these things. Often if you just leave something alone instead of poking at it, you find it isn't anywhere near as big a problem as you thought it was.

- Saph

[ericgrau]

Sure, you could scrap the system, change the names, whatever, but it won't leave your game.

Which is actually a wonderful thing. People will continue to have an alignment, but it will be their roleplaying determining their alignment not their alignment determining their roleplaying. It's not really the alignment system that's the problem but it's people trying to play to fit their alignment (or often a stereotype of it instead) that's the real problem.

If/when I finally get into DMing, I plan on telling everyone to leave their alignment blank - as in to be determined later when it actually matters. Until then they just do what they want. It'd only come up if they play a paladin or have an over-the-top good/lawful/chaotic/etc. backstory or get struck by a spell that affects good/etc. creatures. In the case of the spell I'd probably say (since most parties are "good-ish"), "Yeah, you're good.", or "You act kinda good like most people, but I'm not 100% sure if you're boyscout/hero/etc.-good, so I'll just treat you as neutral for now and you can leave your alignment blank like before."

[Sstoopidtallkid]

I don't go out of my way to define them. None of my other DMs do, either. It hasn't caused any acrimony or party conflict.

It's easy to overreact to these things. Often if you just leave something alone instead of poking at it, you find it isn't anywhere near as big a problem as you thought it was.

- SaphIt's caused issues in my group. Not huge ones, but they had a hard time combining my Dread Necromancer's "CN" with "if we're going to execute them anyways, why not do it as part of a sacrifice to their own Dark God to get Him to withdraw His power from their allies". Our future smackdown by way of Blasphemy made my particular alignment very important.

[Saph]

It's caused issues in my group. Not huge ones, but they had a hard time combining my Dread Necromancer's "CN" with "if we're going to execute them anyways, why not do it as part of a sacrifice to their own Dark God to get Him to withdraw His power from their allies". Our future smackdown by way of Blasphemy made my particular alignment very important.

See, I actually find that kind of stuff quite entertaining. If we had that sort of situation in my group, there'd be an argument about it that might get fairly heated, but which would probably lead to some pretty cool roleplaying. I usually find that these sort of debates do much more to define the characters than the quest/plot that we're supposed to be doing.

But then I like good-and-evil-themed stuff, which I know not everyone else does. The players who aren't interested just write down their alignment as N or CN and forget about it.

- Saph

[horseboy]

Which is actually a wonderful thing. People will continue to have an alignment, but it will be their roleplaying determining their alignment not their alignment determining their roleplaying. It's not really the alignment system that's the problem but it's people trying to play to fit their alignment (or often a stereotype of it instead) that's the real problem.
Yeah, you get a whole lot more Intelligent Evil, scheming and plotting and being subtle and a whole lot less burning down orphanages, killing everyone Stupid Evil "But it says EVIL on my character sheet. I'm just playing my character" stupidity playing without alignments, or at least IMXP.

[Zeful]

Easier solution:

Be mature roleplayers, use them for the guidelines that they are, and inspirations and motivations for your roleplaying.


Don't do what most people that think the system is crap do:

"I am NG, thus I must act like this, and my defination of this is different from everybody else's and now we can argue about it."

Do what is natural and intuitive:

1) Think about alignment briefly at CharGen. Does it jump out and strike you what your character's alignement is? Is it a huge facet of their personality?

If no, write nothing on your sheet, 'cause it hasn't been determined yet. If you must, write neutral.

2) RP your character for a couple sessions. Think about their ethics, flesh out their quirks and such. Now, you probably conclude that their actions is in keeping with the tenants of one of the alignments.

Maybe your fellow players also might comment "Wow, your character is really LG, maybe you should consider taking levels in paladin. You really seem gong-ho on crusading against evil." or perhaps "You are very coniving, selfish and ambitious. You seem to use every situation to your advantage, yet keep a sense of honor and class about you. You really epitomize LE to me." Yes, people don't talk exactly like that, but you get the idea. Don't nitpick the example.

3) Write what you feel your alignment is on your sheet, based on #2. Now, use that guideline to help give a grounding in the future if you are uncertain how your character would act/react and how he might feel about something. Read the alignment description, and in so far as it applies to you, think of how you can bring that out in your RPing.


But no, don't get super caught-up on it. Even if your playing a Paladin, you shouldn't be "Code-Lawyered" by people and if you can't feel the character in your heart and feel your alignment/code is restrictive, you are playing the wrong class TBH.


In summary:

Alignment: A useful RP tool for players if you don't use it like its a stick to beat people with until they conform. Don't Code-Lawyer people, roleplay.

I approve this message.

[Devils_Advocate]

Ah, right! Alignment restrictions! In addition to alignment itself being poorly defined... no, wait, that's overly generous. It's not really defined at all. That's the central problem. But, um, in addition to that, the vast majority of alignment restrictions are hella dumb and should have been tossed out when they got rid of minimum ability score requirements. You should be able to play an unconventional Chaotic Monk on the same basic principle on which you're allowed to play a Monk with a Wisdom score of 8. Not that saying that Monks are usually Lawful even necessarily makes sense.

You should be able to freely multiclass in and out of Monk and Paladin, too.

It's not just classes, either. Alignment just all too often gets crammed into places it has no business being in. For example, robes of the archmagi being divided by alignment is absurd. Arcane spellcasters aren't supposed to have to worry about or be mechanically restricted by their morality. That's how divine spellcasters work. That was supposed to be the deal. That's supposed to be one of the benefits of arcane spellcasting, like how divine spellcasters get to wear armor. Now you're telling me that my wizard gains three negative levels for wearing the uber magic robe we looted from that evil mage and just what the damn hell, man!?

Restrictions on who can use what magic item usually suck, too. I guess the unifying theme here is that mechanical restrictions often suck. (Don't get me wrong, some mechanical restrictions are necessary for game balance. Like skill caps, for instance. Class skills, on the other hand, arguably just suck.)

Kizara, the thing is... that's not how alignment works in D&D. It decides what classes you can take and how your character interacts with magic. These things require that a character's alignment be determined. To use it in the way you suggest, it's helpful to remove, not use, the alignment rules. As it is, alignment restrictive by design.

Even if you remove the alignment rules and use alignment strictly as a roleplaying guideline, it can still be subtly restrictive. Because you're categorizing your character in terms of predefined categories instead of describing him on his own terms. See, alignment is basically a generalization of how a character relates to other sentient beings. But there are many, many sentient beings in the world (and many authorities and traditions), and no remotely realistic character is going to relate to all of them in anything like the same way. This is not an insignificant problem. It's bad enough that assigning any real person an alignment is slightly misleading at best and highly misleading at worst.

"Usually kind to strangers" is a way better roleplaying guideline than "Good-aligned". The first clearly describes a specific aspect of someone's behavior, the second is a vague overgeneralization.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

I'll weigh in here on the side of Kizara. I keep seeing "alignment system is bad" threads, and I wholeheartedly disagree.

Sure, we can get by without the system, but I personally think it's a good way to guide your role-playing, and it ties in with the epic struggles of many fantasy milieux.


Alignment works when it's an afterthought to a character rather than its base. I like to come up with a complete personality before I even begin to think about stats. When I first look at the character sheet I notice the alignment section and can figure out an alignment based on the character I have in mind. Of course I don't think alignment is necessary aside from certain spells and effects.

I think this is the core of the issue. Alignment is a short-hand description of the normal behaviour of a character: no more, no less.

When alignment is applied as a description of how the character is most likely to behave - after the player has decided what sort of behaviour the character is likely to show, then it's not a problem. You invent your character, and think about what drives them, how ruthless they are, how generous or greedy, and how they'll act given certain moral situations - and you use that to pick a best fit alignment.
Later, your character has gone through lots of stuff and the world has changed for them. they make new choices and act differently to how they started out, because they're a changed and more experienced person. So you look at this behaviour, and maybe you change their alignment to reflect it.

There's no need to use alignments in RPGs, sure. The system is only there to label your character's behaviour, not to restrict it. You use it as a guide to remind yourself of how the character is likely to act, so that your NG character doesn't arbitrarily start killing innocent people to get his way, or whatever. Real people tend to act in a consistent way - even if that consistent way is random and unpredictable, we know that they are likely to continue to be random and unpredictable.

If you want your NG character to go on a vengeance killing spree and get all emo about it afterwards, that's a great RP moment - and the alignment system doesn't stop you. If your DM says it does, they're wrong. These are our characters, and they do what we say. Alignment is just the guide to what they're likely to do, and it can and does change, just like in real life.

[Draz74]

It surely helps that in reality, alignment doesn't exist.

That's one opinion, with which I thoroughly disagree.

Fortunately, in fantasy we can try out both ways, however we want -- worlds where alignment really exists, and worlds where it doesn't.

And segueing back to the main topic, I say dropping alignment's effect depends very much on the campaign setting. Obviously you can drop it in Eberron, or my Nelthakus setting. Not so much in, say, my Gyzaninar setting.

EDIT: And case in point with my statement:


It's not just classes, either. Alignment just all too often gets crammed into places it has no business being in. For example, robes of the archmagi being divided by alignment is absurd. Arcane spellcasters aren't supposed to have to worry about or be mechanically restricted by their morality. That's how divine spellcasters work. That was supposed to be the deal. That's supposed to be one of the benefits of arcane spellcasting, like how divine spellcasters get to wear armor. Now you're telling me that my wizard gains three negative levels for wearing the uber magic robe we looted from that evil mage and just what the damn hell, man!?

It's totally a relic from Dragonlance, where arcane magic was far more tied to alignment than most other classes.

[Tequila Sunrise]

Has anyone ever played or considered playing in a game without the alignment system?

Me and some friends were talking about it a couple days ago, and as far as I'm concerned, they don't bring anything new to the game, but impose restrictions to the roleplay aspect of the game, thus I've decided I'll completely drop the alignment system out of all my further games.

What are your thoughts on it?
Alignments do not impose restrictions on role playing, whatsoever. You're thinking of alignment restrictions, which are poorly conceived and outdated class rules.

That said, there's nothing wrong with dropping alignments. Heck, the latest edition of D&D for all practical purposes has dropped them too.

TS

[Kizara]

I'll weigh in here on the side of Kizara. I keep seeing "alignment system is bad" threads, and I wholeheartedly disagree.

Sure, we can get by without the system, but I personally think it's a good way to guide your role-playing, and it ties in with the epic struggles of many fantasy milieux.



I think this is the core of the issue. Alignment is a short-hand description of the normal behaviour of a character: no more, no less.

When alignment is applied as a description of how the character is most likely to behave - after the player has decided what sort of behaviour the character is likely to show, then it's not a problem. You invent your character, and think about what drives them, how ruthless they are, how generous or greedy, and how they'll act given certain moral situations - and you use that to pick a best fit alignment.
Later, your character has gone through lots of stuff and the world has changed for them. they make new choices and act differently to how they started out, because they're a changed and more experienced person. So you look at this behaviour, and maybe you change their alignment to reflect it.

There's no need to use alignments in RPGs, sure. The system is only there to label your character's behaviour, not to restrict it. You use it as a guide to remind yourself of how the character is likely to act, so that your NG character doesn't arbitrarily start killing innocent people to get his way, or whatever. Real people tend to act in a consistent way - even if that consistent way is random and unpredictable, we know that they are likely to continue to be random and unpredictable.

If you want your NG character to go on a vengeance killing spree and get all emo about it afterwards, that's a great RP moment - and the alignment system doesn't stop you. If your DM says it does, they're wrong. These are our characters, and they do what we say. Alignment is just the guide to what they're likely to do, and it can and does change, just like in real life.

Great job expanding and adding to my post. Thanks.


On another note, on alignment class restrictions. I am all for not sacrificing flavor for character convience, and even I think they are better served as recomendations then requirements. You need a good reason to play an against-type Chaotic Evil monk, but you shouldn't be explicitly prohibited from doing so.
The before-rules flavor text should describe how most monks are lawful, why, and how any monk characters would heavily be influenced by this. Thus, you would have to explain why your character is different from this norm, and do better then "because its badass and I want the abilities and can't be arsed to RP the trope intelligently".

This is a much better solution then, for instance, the ToB crusader that just dispenses with the soul of the class for 'cooler' abilities with 'less baggage'. I know a lot of people love doing things this way, but it seriously cheapens the class IMO.

Conversely, if you want an example of a terrible implimentation of alignment-based restrictions, check out the commander auras in Heros of Battle. Seriously, complete nonsense.

[Tequila Sunrise]

On another note, on alignment class restrictions. I am all for not sacrificing flavor for character convenience, and even I think they are better served as recomendations then requirements. You need a good reason to play an against-type Chaotic Evil monk, but you shouldn't be explicitly prohibited from doing so.
The before-rules flavor text should describe how most monks are lawful, why, and how any monk characters would heavily be influenced by this. Thus, you would have to explain why your character is different from this norm, and do better then "because its badass and I want the abilities and can't be arsed to RP the trope intelligently".
As a side note, I never understood law-chaos restrictions. Assuming for a moment the complete validity of the "law = discipline" theory, why would any trained class require any less discipline than one like the monk for example? Are those weird magicky abilities really supposed to require so much more discipline than learning actual spells, learning to channel your rage into a useful tool, learning just the right places to stab someone to death or anything else that adventurers learn? Maybe, but the distinction sounds pretty forced to me.

/non-sequitur

TS

[Berserk Monk]

But with no alignments, I think the paladins would all kill themselves. Wait never mind. I think that would be a good thing.:smallbiggrin:

[KeresM]

For the most part, I ignore alignment. Unless you take exalted or vile feats, you really don't show up on the universe's 'radar' so to speak. You have to be an exemplary or horrid person for the detect/protection from spells to function against you. If you are in the process of committing an evil act, you may detect as evil.

As for the law/chaos axis, I've more or less tossed that completely.

[AslanCross]

Honestly I've never seen how alignment was such a bad thing. It may not be the most elegantly delineated system, but I think it's just fine if you don't dwell on it too much. I'm more concerned about the suppression of party conflict, which still happens even when everybody is good.

[Tengu_temp]

It surely helps that in reality, alignment doesn't exist. Marketing exists. And everyone uses it to show how they are the Good people and those others are the Evil people.

I'm afraid I cannot agree with you - compare Martin Luther King to Hi... Stalin (oof, no Godwin, but close). Things are often very complicated in real life, but there still ARE people whom you can label as good and evil. It just requires a lot of effort.

[Draco Dracul]

I'm afraid I cannot agree with you - compare Martin Luther King to Hi... Stalin (oof, no Godwin, but close). Things are often very complicated in real life, but there still ARE people whom you can label as good and evil. It just requires a lot of effort.

This, I think an alignment system that is trying for anything even resembling realism should only have the far extremes labled as Good/Evil (i.e. Stalin/Hitler/Ted Bundy have alignment and MLK/Gahndi/Mother Teresa have alignment, but any random guy on the street probalbly does not have alignment).

[hamishspence]

depends what you mean by evil: Quintessenial Paladin 2 discusses the several versions, but in D&D Forgotten Realms setting, where ordinary drunken bullies can have Evil alignment, it makes sense to go with the first one- that nearly 1/3 of the population are at least faintly evil.

[Draco Dracul]

depends what you mean by evil: Quintessenial Paladin 2 discusses the several versions, but in D&D Forgotten Realms setting, where ordinary drunken bullies can have Evil alignment, it makes sense to go with the first one- that nearly 1/3 of the population are at least faintly evil.

I see as most people tend so close to the line between good and evil that they are for all intents and purposes nuetral and that their aligment is reletive. You only find definite good and definite evil at the extremes.

[Morty]

I see as most people tend so close to the line between good and evil that they are for all intents and purposes nuetral and that their aligment is reletive. You only find definite good and definite evil at the extremes.

For a while, I wanted to make a long post explaining why I disagree with this. But then I remembered that it'd cause another alignment discussion. And this is why alignment system is bad.

[hamishspence]

it is possible to play that way, and aforesaid book does have suggestions on this, its just not the default, going by the number of D&D books contradicting it.

[Draco Dracul]

it is possible to play that way, and aforesaid book does have suggestions on this, its just not the default, going by the number of D&D books contradicting it.

Thats part of my problem with the way alignment is presented, there should not be a catagory so broad that it covers Bob the baker who overcharges on bread and Owen the Overlord who thows pesents to the lions for fun.

[hamishspence]

the line between "neutral with evil tendencies" and "evil with neutral tendencies" will always be hard to define in any system.

overcharging is like theft- but milder. And theft is mildly evil at worst, mostly. Mr Overcharger is more likely to be a particularly nasty Neutral. Mr Slum Overlord who throws people out in middle of winter if they get behind- more of an Evil type.

[Draco Dracul]

the line between "neutral with evil tendencies" and "evil with neutral tendencies" will always be hard to define in any system.

overcharging is like theft- but milder. And theft is mildly evil at worst, mostly. Mr Overcharger is more likely to be a particularly nasty Neutral. Mr Slum Overlord who throws people out in middle of winter if they get behind- more of an Evil type.

AH, I can agree with that. I guess I have read too many alignment threads by EE.

[hamishspence]

Yup- Champions of Ruin (Faerun, but generic enough to be handy anywhere) points out it's consistant evil behaviour that marks an evil alignment. Good people can do evil in a crisis, occasionally, but if they keep doing it, or the acts are very large, then we start to see alignmnet slide.

Tordek in PHB is given as example of someone who is LG, yet might steal if he can justify it.

Charging what the market will bear certainly isn't evil. Cheating on the scales however, marks a very mild evil act, which might, eventually, kept up over a long time, lead to shift.

[Agrippa]

I'm afraid I cannot agree with you - compare Martin Luther King to Hi... Stalin (oof, no Godwin, but close). Things are often very complicated in real life, but there still ARE people whom you can label as good and evil. It just requires a lot of effort.

I'd also add Saint Francis of Asissi to the good end and Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada to the evil end of the alignment spectrum.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

This, I think an alignment system that is trying for anything even resembling realism should only have the far extremes labled as Good/Evil (i.e. Stalin/Hitler/Ted Bundy have alignment and MLK/Gahndi/Mother Teresa have alignment, but any random guy on the street probalbly does not have alignment).Except that I can make an argument that one of those good people was actually Evil, and that one of those Evil people was trying to be good and just went to far. It's all marketing.

[Shosuro Ishii]

Except that I can make an argument that one of those good people was actually Evil, and that one of those Evil people was trying to be good and just went to far. It's all marketing.

And you can make an equally good arguement that the idea idea of trying to tie abstract, fictional concepts such as 'good' and 'evil' to a person or their actions, is fallacious, but that's how alignment arguements tend to get started

Apparently, the people working on the alignment system didn't think this through though.

[Tengu_temp]

This, I think an alignment system that is trying for anything even resembling realism should only have the far extremes labled as Good/Evil (i.e. Stalin/Hitler/Ted Bundy have alignment and MLK/Gahndi/Mother Teresa have alignment, but any random guy on the street probalbly does not have alignment).

I should clarify one thing - it's not being good or evil that requires lot of effort. It's judging someone to be good or evil that requires a lot of effort - you need to know the person and their deeds and motivations very well, and there's still a high chance they might end up neutral.

I'd say that roughly 40% of people are neutral, a bit more than 30% are evil and a bit less than 30% are good, in real life.

[Saph]

I'd say that roughly 40% of people are neutral, a bit more than 30% are evil and a bit less than 30% are good, in real life.

I think of it as more like 60%/20%/20%. I've always thought that True Neutral describes most humans pretty well - they prefer good over evil in the abstract, but they're not going to put their lives on the line for it.

- Saph

[Virgo]

In a game that I'm presently playing (as an evil PC among a group of neutral and good), alignments are considered to be a part of society and more or less an inborn trait as opposed to something that a character actively alters. My character is actually gearing up to fight a legal battle to have alignment evidence tossed out of court cases as unnecessarly prejudicial.

It's probably a rare case in which the alignment system itself provides a personal plot hook. :smallbiggrin:

[snoopy13a]

Alignment was originally put into the game as a rough roleplaying guide, more or less, for a generation unfamiliar with the unconcept. It has been carried on through the editions more out of a sense of tradition than anything else. You don't really need it and most new games don't have it for good cause.

I actually like the idea of alignments only existing as roleplaying guides as I think it helps people decide what to do in certain situations. I'm not a huge fan of having too many mechanics involved though.

[The Minx]

I'm afraid I cannot agree with you - compare Martin Luther King to Hi... Stalin (oof, no Godwin, but close). Things are often very complicated in real life, but there still ARE people whom you can label as good and evil. It just requires a lot of effort.

Agreed, though I have to quibble about one thing: calling Hitler evil is NOT invoking Godwin's Law. It's only a Godwin if you equate someone else with Hitler, and then only if doing so is both inappropriate and irrelevant. Godwin's Law is a subset of the Guilt By Association fallacy.

For instance: saying "you can't be a vegetarian because Hitler was a vegetarian!" or "you can't listen to Wagner because Hitler used Wagner music in his rallies!" are examples of Godwin's Law. So is "beefing up the military and invading other countries is being like Hitler!"


OTOH, if someone were to advocate bigotry (including in particular anti-Semitism), nationalism, militarism, expansionism and authoritarianism and achieved these things with a combination of creepy demagoguery, banal attempts at pageantry, claims of past national victimization, an obvious messiah complex and political violence in general, you can and should compare him to Hitler. :smallwink:

[Dervag]

Agreed, though I have to quibble about one thing: calling Hitler evil is NOT invoking Godwin's Law. It's only a Godwin if you equate someone else with Hitler, and then only if doing so is both inappropriate and irrelevant. Godwin's Law is a subset of the Guilt By Association fallacy.There's an entire category of mildly joking invocation of Godwin's Law.

Most intelligent people know that Hitler isn't The Forbidden Name On The Internet, and that Godwin's Law doesn't say it is. But can be amusing to play around with the "rule."


I think of it as more like 60%/20%/20%. I've always thought that True Neutral describes most humans pretty well - they prefer good over evil in the abstract, but they're not going to put their lives on the line for it.

- SaphHmm. I'd say 50/25/25, maybe 50/30/20 (I have a slightly rosier-than-neutral view of human nature). There are a lot of people who really do behave decently in a consistent way, or who really are bastards in a consistent way.

[The Minx]

There's an entire category of mildly joking invocation of Godwin's Law.

Most intelligent people know that Hitler isn't The Forbidden Name On The Internet, and that Godwin's Law doesn't say it is. But can be amusing to play around with the "rule."

I've seen Godwin's Law misused before, including on this forum. But on re-reading Tengu_temp's post I see that this is not one of those times. I guess it is not my day to get subtle jokes. :smallredface:

[Athaniar]

DEATH TO THE ALIGNMENT SYSTEM!!!1!

Sorry for that, but I honestly don't like it. It's nothing but a ball and chain for roleplaying. In fact, in my new campaign setting (soon to be uncovered), there is no alignment. No humans either, but that's beside the point. I'm giving good Outsiders a (Celestial) subtype and evil Outsiders a (Fiend) subtype. Alignment-dependant spells will be removed, and so will the associated domains. Paladins will smite Fiends, Undead, and Aberrations instead. And no Blood War. Baatezu, Yugoloth, and Tana'ri are on the same side, fighting the celestials, who are also all on the same side.

[Morty]

I think of it as more like 60%/20%/20%. I've always thought that True Neutral describes most humans pretty well - they prefer good over evil in the abstract, but they're not going to put their lives on the line for it.

- Saph

I'd say it's preety pointless to have nine alignments if majority of the people is going to fall under one of them.

[greyhoundpoe]

I ran a very interesting one-shot where we used only the Law/Chaos axis of the alignment system, and I found it worked quite well. It managed to keep the "something fundamental about who you are can affect magic and how the world works" feel which is key to why Planescape is so popular, but it also didn't *replace* the players' sense of morality, as Good/Evil often does.

Just my 2c.

[horseboy]

Apparently, the people working on the alignment system didn't think this through though.Well we wouldn't want the Alignment rules to be different than any of the others, now would we?