Good examples of using alignment?

[Beta Centauri]

As you too have said, OOC communication works better for "control over the experience" than mechanical choices do.

Equivocation. The issue is the experience as it's modified by others' behavior, and controlling that behavior by telling players that someone of a given alignment wouldn't do such a thing, or that if they do such a thing their alignment will be forcibly changed (possibly impacting the usefulness of their class, or other features). One can have a personal opinion on how a given class or race would act, but there's not much leverage directly in the rules for making someone act a given way due to their race or class.

Sounds easy enough. Just treat it the way you treat everything else in the game.

If it's easy, then why aren't we seeing more personal examples. Why aren't you providing any? You're still just implying that alignment is no more troublesome than any other element, when it clearly is.

Class restricts what a character can do. So does race. And many other game mechanics that you choose.

Via specific rules, not value judgments. One can say "Hey, your dwarf wouldn't get along with his elf," but there's no rule against that, and no in-system grounds or means for taking away the character's race because they're playing it in a way that bothers someone else.

I don't see a difference in how race class and alignment are used. They all give the players options and limitations. They're all used to force players to pigeonhole themselves in some way or another.

But the rules due the pigeonholing, not anyone's opinion of what those options mean. The GM doesn't have to tell the fighter that the fighter can't choose to cast a spell, because that's just not an option for the fighter. There's no in-game mechanism for the GM punishing a player who decides to cast a spell, because it's just not an option. If the fighter does it anyway, then there's an out-of-game conversation about following rules.

The GM can tell the evil assassin that he can't save an innocent's life, because while that should be an option for the fighter, the GM may decide that it shouldn't be. If the assassin decides to do it anyway, there are in-game provisions for punishing that assassin, and diminishing its effectiveness in the game, despite the fact that the action in question is completely unrelated to character effectiveness or game balance.

Now, those are just the rules, and if that happens then it was the player's choice, right? No cheating or disruption was involved, right? The rules worked, didn't they? Yes, but whatever disruptive behavior that disincentive was meant to prevent still happened, and now the game is distrupted and the player has a cruddy character.

Or, the GM can just express their preference for how the game goes, and get buy in.

Those are kind of the general advantages of the system

• Giving immature players a reason to learn how to work together as a group (I've found it especially useful for kids under 15)
• Giving inexperienced role players some ideas on how to flesh out their character beyond "guy who hits things with a stick" .. there are other methods I like better, but few of them are as simple as alignment.
• Helping inexperienced players separate their desires as a player from what their character would want.
• Giving GMs a broad idea on how a particular npc or monster should be played without requiring deep thought into it.

What is the reason to work together? If they don't, what happens? Doesn't their alignment just change, and the game go on? But aren't people expected to work together despite different alignments?
Why is it important to separate their desires as a player from what their character would want? Why not just help them pick an alignment that lets them do what they want? And what's the incentive not to just do what they want? Change of alignment?
I've never seen alignments presented in terms of how one should play monsters of those alignments. If they did, I would agree that they were somewhat useful.

Do you have examples of any of the above?

More experienced players and gms tend to form a more nuanced view of alignment. The only time I've really seen any problems was with an experienced player who didn't realize how inexperienced his GM was.

Look around the forum, though. Or ask anyone about problems they've had regarding alignment. Maybe you've lucked out, but alignment has mired a lot of people, even experienced ones. It has a lot to make up for, unlike most other game options (even the paladin isn't troublesome, once alignment concerns are dropped).

As an example: I was playing a Balance aligned innate magic user, there were several cases where it was useful to draw on how the various alignments (Elder vs Kotothi, Sidh vs Kotothi, Law vs Chaos, Shamanic Elder vs Law and Chaos) interacted to determine how I should treat various NPCs, and where I could best serve the Balance. The party (as I recall) had members who were Balance, shamanic elder and Sidh aligned, but it's been so long I don't remember a lot of specifics.

I seem to remember convincing my party to not aid a Law NPC Wizard as he fought some the Kotothi forces... the Sidh member of our party was livid, but we convinced him that we could always come in later and take on the Kotothi forces after the Law Wizard had softened them up, thereby weakening both Law AND Kotothi

Okay, cool example. I don't know what those alignments mean, except for maybe Law vs. Chaos. But the way your example reads, I feel I could substitute anything.

I seem to remember convincing my party to not aid a Drow NPC Wizard as he fought some the goblin forces... the duergar member of our party was livid, but we convinced him that we could always come in later and take on the goblin forces after the Drow Wizard had softened them up, thereby weakening both Drow AND goblins.

But D&D alignment doesn't interchange with race or class or anything else that way. I've never seen anyone talk about "weakening Chaos AND Evil." That's a cool idea, and if D&D alignment was played that way, I might dig it, but it's not. Even back when there was just Law, Neutrality and Chaos, and Protection from Evil defined evil as "an alignment other than yours," Chaos was very clearly the "immoral" alignment, and players were to be discouraged from playing it, and their characters taken away if the GM felt they'd reverted to it.