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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3517730" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think that alignment introduces complexity, not simplicity. Instead of players just playing their characters, they also have to think about how their PCs actions lead to them acquiring a metaphysical label, which then determines how various spells, planes etc will affect them.It is further complicated by the fact that those metaphysical labels use words like "good" and "evil" which have an ordinary meaning that is not fully reflected in the game - for example, it seems to be sufficient to count as "evil" in D&D that someone act in a selfish manner, but in real life most people act selfishly a lot of the time, and we don't judge them to be evil (to put it technically - what in real life we tend to regard as superogatory, D&D tends to make a necessary condition as counting as "good").This complexity is compounded by the fact that most PCs are more-or-less Conanesque mercenaries, who will kill without a second thought, but the game encourages players and GMs to think as "good" as the norm (look at alignments in modules, for example, and admonitions against playing evil PCs).There are other implicaitons, too. Most paladin PCs, for example, want to smite the infidel. But if the infidel are not labelled "evil", then they are in danger of losing their paladinhood. To resolve this issue, a D&D campaign has to make most of the enemies of the paladin not humans with a conflicting relgion (a la the crusades)  but essentially evil humanoids or demons. (Thus, I don't think its a coincidence that D&D makes it a bit hard to do gritty - because alignment is anti-gritty.)As Ourph said above, it's hard to drop alignment altogether because of its link to spells etc. The easiest approach might be one I've heard R Foster advocate - let the player choose the label, and then basically ignore it until the label is needed to resolve a spell effect.</blockquote>

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