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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3202144" data-attributes="member: 2067">No, I think it's fair to say that those who have the biggest and loudest complaints with alignment tend to fall into the camp of people who also don't quite understand the alignment rules as they exist today (which is a far cry from where they were 25 years ago, that's for sure!).There are valid complaints about alignment. But it is not a system for judging morality, nor is it meant to simulate any real human approximation of the thing, and has gone through many fairly drastic changes in 25 years. A game that emphasises heroic good vs. evil conflict (and some conflicts within good and evil) doesn't need a sophisticated morality system. And 3e's current descriptive system, where you play your character and then happen to fit an alignment, is one of the easiest to adjuicate for those who don't get caught up in needless technicalities.The real disconnects, I feel, is when people either try to apply it as a prohibitive mechanic, or when they start applying it too tightly to the real world.Alignment doesn't tell you what you can and cannot do. It describes what you *do* do. There is no longer a penalty for not playing your character correctly according to their alignment, nor is there a price to pay for change. You get to play your character however you want, and leave the alignment issues to the DM.Alignment also isn't a mirror for the real world. In the real world, everyone believes they're doing something Good, more or less. In D&D, there are no real delusions about who is doing Good (unless illusion and deception are part of the action), and Evil is not something to be avoided. They are different paths to walk, each with their own descriptions and rewards. There is no absolute eternal punishment for not being nice in D&D. Indeed, it can lead you to more ability to be not-nice. There's nothing WRONG with not being Good. The necromancer-king doesn't usually believe he's doing Good. Maybe he believes it's for the best, maybe he believes it will benefit people, maybe he has himself convinced that it's nessecary, but he can look in the mirror and tell that he's Evil. He just probably doesn't care -- if his behavior is Evil, so be it, it is still his actions and his choices and his motives behind it. There are valid complaints about alignment, but I don't see many of those. Instead, I see people who give up on the issue before they even really understand it because of some misguided desire for moral relativism in their games, and then criticize the system for failings that it doesn't actually have. (that is, generally speaking this is what I see, not specific to anything in this thread)</blockquote>

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