wlmartin
Explorer
Well.. its not like I am starting a petition to do so, but would like to reminisce.
Alignments were something personal, you roleplayed your alignment and unless you had other members of your group casting "Know Alignment" spells, they had to guess what you were --- it was nice and secretive.
Also, the concept of Alignment (which D&D pretty much invented) was a guideline for playing your character. Playing an Evil character was fun!!
However someone at WotC came up with the idea that Alignments screwed up gameplay... you couldn't have a CE wizard, a N druid and a LG paladin in the same group!!! Whilst I suppose that was right, after all the motivations of those 3 different PCs would be some unaligned that it wouldnt make GAME sense for the PCs to even be in the same group...
So now what do we have for PCs
Lawful Good
Good
Unaligned
This was their way of sidesteping the whole "What do we do with Alignments?" problem - since an alignment nowadays is just flavor (although some classes need you to be a specific alignment) much like your choice of Deity... I just yearn to be CG again
Chaotic Good was the best Alignment to be. It meant you didn't give a poop about the rules and law but would do the right thing. You were a renegade, a rebel!
Anyways - does anyone else miss Alignments? Do you remember the fun Alignments brought to old editions?
Alignments were something personal, you roleplayed your alignment and unless you had other members of your group casting "Know Alignment" spells, they had to guess what you were --- it was nice and secretive.
Also, the concept of Alignment (which D&D pretty much invented) was a guideline for playing your character. Playing an Evil character was fun!!
However someone at WotC came up with the idea that Alignments screwed up gameplay... you couldn't have a CE wizard, a N druid and a LG paladin in the same group!!! Whilst I suppose that was right, after all the motivations of those 3 different PCs would be some unaligned that it wouldnt make GAME sense for the PCs to even be in the same group...
So now what do we have for PCs
Lawful Good
Good
Unaligned
This was their way of sidesteping the whole "What do we do with Alignments?" problem - since an alignment nowadays is just flavor (although some classes need you to be a specific alignment) much like your choice of Deity... I just yearn to be CG again
Chaotic Good was the best Alignment to be. It meant you didn't give a poop about the rules and law but would do the right thing. You were a renegade, a rebel!
Anyways - does anyone else miss Alignments? Do you remember the fun Alignments brought to old editions?