D&D General Do you use Alignment in your D&D games?

[nyvinter]

Yet, 1000's, indeed 10's if not 100's of thousands, of people have used it over decades, and the world had yet to implode.

Odd.

Yeah, but if the creator of the alignments use mutilation and murder of captured enemies as lawful good paladin, clearly it can mean whatever you want. So why bother? But you do what you do.

(And of course the world hasn't imploded. It's a game. But we don't need to retain badly designed stuff for the sake of it over forty years later.)

 

[payn]

And here I thought that the factions had little to do with alignment. Of course some factions probably lean towards some alignements, but I don't think there are hard and fast rules there...

Not tied to any official rule or anything, but I usually give factions an alignment. The members can vary, but the organization will lean in a certain direction.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I haven't been in one of the games I'm running (I think the players wrote it down on their sheets).

When I make character sheets I don't include a line for alignment, so that lessens the chances of players writing it down!

 

[Scribe]

Yeah, but if the creator of the alignments use mutilation and murder of captured enemies as lawful good paladin, clearly it can mean whatever you want.

And still, (likely) million's of players have used Alignment to various degrees, across various systems, for literal decades, and found it did enough of what they wanted it to do, to retain value.

Thats not an opinion, like you dropped on the thread, thats a factual statement.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I mostly use it for grand scale cosmic conflicts and creatures of the Outer Planes. For mortal NPCs I use it as a guideline. For PCs I let the players say whatever they want but have an idea of what I consider their "real" alignment in my head. If I ever base any effects on this "real" alignment for the PCs I don't make it explicit. It makes things more mysterious that way without inviting a debate.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yet, 1000's, indeed 10's if not 100's of thousands, of people have used it over decades, and the world had yet to implode.

Odd.

Whilst alignment indeed is a truly terrible system, it probably still doesn't quite reach the badness threshold that would be required to seriously threaten the structural integrity of a terrestrial planet.

 

[Oofta]

Yeah, but if the creator of the alignments use mutilation and murder of captured enemies as lawful good paladin, clearly it can mean whatever you want. So why bother? But you do what you do.

(And of course the world hasn't imploded. It's a game. But we don't need to retain badly designed stuff for the sake of it over forty years later.)

Why does it matter what one guy thought decades ago? The game has come a long way since Gygax.

It's such a common trope that people that have never played D&D have a general idea of what alignment means. It doesn't even matter if people don't have exact same precise definition, it's still a useful yardstick for a lot of people.

 

[Cadence]

Why does it matter what one guy thought decades ago? The game has come a long way since Gygax.

It's such a common trope that people that have never played D&D have a general idea of what alignment means. It doesn't even matter if people don't have exact same precise definition, it's still a useful yardstick for a lot of people.

If you listen to them talk, the never play group might sound more coherent about it than those of us who have debated it on message boards

 

[Gradine]

Ew no

 

[Jer]

I've found that alignment has never been useful for much of anything in my games beyond 1) starting arguments in junior high and 2) memes. It's great for memes.

In game if I'm using alignment its because there's some huge conflict between Law and Chaos and the players are supposed to be picking sides that they align with - "alignment" in the Mooocockian sense.