Except perhaps during the earliest part of my high school and college days--which was back when 2e was out--I've don't think I've ever been in a D&D group where the players always went in blasting or where what the monster was like wasn't important. My group tried to do the GDQ series, converted to 5e, and gave up because we find that sort of stuff, without enough RPing, to be quite boring.
yes we already acknowledged different playing styles exist. Your experience being different isn't an argument to get rid of a tool people use which you do not. But I feel like there is a tone here that hints at a snideness which I will reference below.
And this is where alignment becomes a straightjacket, particularly when you have racial alignments. Oh, it's an orc, it must be one of the baddies because that's what its alignment is. Nope, can't use them as allies; they're baddies. Oh, it's a gold dragon, it has to be an ally.
This, from my perspective in our games, is sheer nonsense. There is no straight jacket at all to an NPC stat block. And I didn't say a monster state block in a monster manual, I said A NON-PLAYER CHARACTER STAT BLOCK IN A WRITTEN ADVENTURE.
You just either intentionally shifted the argument, or showed you didn't follow it to begin with (or I guess third choice, intentionally misrepresented it). There is no "it's an orc therefore" anywhere in anything I've said or implied. I don't see how anyone could get that impression from anything I've written. Not there is "an orc" but I've always said THIS SPECIFIC NPC is alignment X.
If you thought you were arguing against someone in favor of "all race X are alignment Y" then you're mistaken. Find someone else to disagree with about that topic because that's not what I am saying at all.
Good thing I prefer Unseen University to Hogwarts.
"Not a combat-first encounter" and "bad guy" are not descriptions of how to play the creature or what it's like. Also, it's a straightjacket because why should a particular monster always be a bad guy or potential ally? That highly limits what you can do with the creature.
It really doesn't. I can play them however I want, but I like having the tool of "evil" or "good" or "neutral" as a shorthand to what I am going to find described in the description for that NPC. Doesn't mean they cannot be an ally if evil - but it does mean IF they're going to be an ally, the nature of that alliance is going to be precarious and likely dependent on a mutual enemy or similar reason to not fight each other. It's a hint as to what I will find in the description.
And how many of these people prep with alignment because it's a useful tool, and how many prep with it because that's what they've always done, and how many people prep with it because they don't know what to do with a creature unless it has an alignment to tell them that the creature is a bad guy or not a combat-first creature?
It doesn't matter. Have enough respect for your peers to trust they know themselves better than you know them, and you know yourself better than they know you. Your job is not to show them the better way because you know better than them, any more their job is to show you a better way because they know better than you.
It's this elitist tone I think that pisses people off the most - that your games are somehow better and you know better and others just need to be educated on your enlightened ways. It came through in your first paragraph about how you have found combat boring since you left middle school years, and couped with this "people just don't know enough" attitude, that makes me think you're not in this conversation to change hearts and minds so much as it's to tweak the grognards who dissent from your view.
It's possible alignment is a tool some find genuine use for, and others do not. And it should be OK for a tool to exist which you don't use and others do.
And again, the type of armor doesn't tell you how to play the character. We're not talking about loot here. We're talking about roleplaying.
Can the game take away a DM tool because it has caused countless arguments over literal decades and is often not used properly even within the game itself?
Roleplaying notes are no more or less important than anything else in that statblock is my point. You have all sorts of stuff in a statblock which are summaries of larger concepts, used as short hand. Hit points are not really how much damage a creature can take so much as they're a representation of their luck and skill and toughness and protection from their gods and endurance and all sorts of factors which all get summarized as "hit points" in the stat block. Much like Strength: 18 represents how well the creature can jump, climb, escape from a grapple, initiate a grapple, lift things, drag things, shove things, etc..And AC 20 means a lot of things, including the armor elaborated on in the description. Much like LG is representing a huge host of RP attitudes and preconceived notions which, for some stat blocks, will be elaborated on in the description.
I do think NPC stat blocks for alignment are used in-game fairly often. I also think authors of adventures also like them as a tool.
And no, "people argue on message boards" isnt a good reason to take away a tool. People will argue about whatever you replace it with as well so that's a bad argument
I don't think people argue IN GAME about NPC stat blocks. They argue about PLAYER CHARACTER alignment and I already said I don't care about that. Remove it all you want. It's not what I find useful from that tool. If players want to use it as a tool for their PC though, be my guest. But please, include it in NPC stat blocks in adventures, or replace it with something at least as useful and brief.
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