FrozenNorth
Hero
From this and the following example, my understanding that you agree that an NPC can be one way at work (lazy and unmotivated), a different way at home (loving and dutiful), and yet a third way among strangers (wary and mistrustful). This seems to be what I characterized in my post as “weak” alignment: at any given moment, the NPC’s alignment is a useful predictor. So what is the point of alignment?Strongly disagree. If you choose to play the character static that is on you, not alignment.
One can play a static character with regards to traits, flaws, class, background, religion, hobbies....anything and yet we do not blame these other things.
So, a Good character murdered (not killed) a goblin because he was Evil. You don’t specify in your post whether the character was L, N or C, but given that your argument is that this does not modify their alignment, suppose, for the sake of argument that the character was LG.Last session, a good-natured character engaged in threat of torture and lying and in the end sanctioned a murder. The victim of all of this was a goblin. The player motivated that his character's knowledge of and history with goblins was that they were rapists, killers, pillagers and just in general a destructive force and that her views was that all goblins were vile, evil, irredeemable creatures. It was backstory created on the spot for a pregenerated character.
My understanding is that this would be a problem for several of the posters here who are in favor of alignment. In fact, in my experience, this exact scenario has led to players leaving the game (obviously, I can’t speak for your specific case).