Don't like alignment, don't use it. It's just a default and general guideline anyway. I don't see why we have to throw out something just because a vocal minority don't want to use it.
Are you really sure the vocal minority is the side that
opposes alignment? Because I'm pretty sure that's SIGNIFICANTLY in debate....at the very very least.
I don't want to think too much about the bare-bones outlines I initially throw together when designing my world. I want to put a cottage here, next to a lake and a stream. Most of the time that's enough. Sometimes I'll want to know how wide the stream is and how hard is it to cross. Is the lake deep? Shallow? What kind of fish? Same with alignment.
So you just have Random Unexplained Antagonist Force? That seems....incredibly at odds with every single thing you've said in previous threads about how serious you are about your world-building and how detrimental it is for even a single unplanned deviation like "a new race that comes from a hitherto-unknown continent."
Sometimes I just want a generic CE bully. I know he's evil, he doesn't care much about the letter of the law, contracts, none of that.
If you
already know this, why do you need the game to
tell you "oh and by the way, THESE sapient beings are inherently Chaotic Evil (which can mean anything from "bully" to "serial rapist" to "cosmic representation of unrestrained desire" and is thus nearly meaningless in terms of actual, expressed behavior)...unless you elect for them not to be." If you KNOW, just do it. And if you DON'T know, it seems reasonable that you should think about it first.
Other times I want a mob tough guy. Just as evil, but he has certain rules and he follows a chain of command because he has respect for the organization. Two bad guys, different world views all from going from a "C" to an "L". I can't imagine a system that could replace that simplicity that would tell me as much.
Except that, as others have noted, you can quite easily have mobsters that are CE (they DO oppose the law of the land and regularly backstab OTHER groups to gain power, after all) and bullies who are lawful (just look at current issues with police brutality). I can even see some TN options for the mobsters, and many bullies are just trolls or (far more commonly) abused kids/disenfranchised adults lashing out rather than people committed to harm or violence. Which....again, is the whole problem with alignment. YOU have YOUR clean, simple idea of how it cashes out, but as soon as that butts up against others' clean, simple ideas (or more likely messy, nuanced ideas), inconsistencies and disagreement are extremely likely to arise. Unless you ONLY and EXCLUSIVELY play with the exact same people 100% of the time which....yeah you should already know that that is far from universal, since I know the topic has come up before.
Again: if you KNOW it's a bully or a mobster, just make a being that is a bully or a mobster. If it's an orc, fine. If it's a human, fine. What do you actually GAIN from the book saying "these allegedly sapient beings are inherently Chaotic and Evil"? You already know what you want, and you quite clearly won't ONLY choose labelled-as-CE races for bullies (since I'm sure you've had human bullies before) and ONLY labelled-as-LE races for mobsters (since I'm sure you've had human mobsters, or an equivalent, before).
False Equivalences are false. First, I've never met anyone who did miss those things, but I've met lots who like alignment a lot.
Lack of experience is YOUR lack, not evidence. I have met at least a few people who miss every single one of those things. Ever looked at Dragonsfoot? Yeaaaah. There's people there who think every edition since 2e (or even 2e itself) was a Fundamentally Bad Idea That Never Should Have Been Printed. And they will TOTALLY go up to bat for racial level limits, complete with doctrinal quotes from St. Gygax himself.
Second, those things were never, EVER, sacred cows that were a core part of the game like alignment is.
Yes they were.
They just weren't TO YOU.
That's literally the only difference. You're on the other side of the fence this time.
Humanocentrism, enforced (in part) by level limits and racial classes, WAS a sacred cow. It was slaughtered earlier than other sacred cows because it really wasn't very popular. It was a position held far more by its designers than its fanbase...and even the designers often houseruled it. For comparison, THAC0 was a one-edition sacred cow. There were plenty REAL people who argued that, if you removed THAC0, you could let ANYONE just join and play D&D--that a vital filter for the insufficiently intelligent or dedicated would be lost. 3e was a horribly offensive affront to them for opening the floodgates to whatever flotsam-and-jetsam riffraff might float in--welcoming the demise of D&D's identity and culture.
Sacred cows getting slaughtered by new editions is one of the most D&D things there can be. Sort of like how every damn edition does multiclassing in its own unique way, even of you can make comparisons.
You already could. From the 5e DMG, "In creating your campaign world, it helps to start with the core assumptions and consider how your setting might change them."
And what we're saying is, maybe it's better to approach it as a toolkit to build your own thing with
from minute one, rather than giving a half-prebuilt treehouse and telling the DM (and player) to think about how they would want to disassemble it first.
It's honestly hilarious to me how some of the very same people who argue that the game needs to be viewed from a toolkit direction then also argue that the game needs built-in premade defaults....that just HAPPEN to be the premade defaults they like, while keeping all the areas they DON'T want premade defaults as loosey-goosey as possible.
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