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<blockquote data-quote="Professor Phobos" data-source="post: 1508971" data-attributes="member: 18883">The alignment system is useful for two major reasons.1. As a training wheel for new players who might not be inclined to naturally develop character personalities. This I find is rarely necessary, but I'm stuck running online games and have thus far avoided &quot;newbies.&quot;2. As a method for maintaining a certain kind of morality for a given setting. &quot;Stock D&amp;D&quot; has an absolute, black and white moral code, and usually a pantheon of deities that reflect said code. Likewise, we have alignment dependent rules and spells. In this sense it is no different than other personality mechanics, like those in Pendragon. (Or, in a sense, Sanity in Cthulhu.)Personally, I've found alignment counter-intuitive and I've never developed or wanted to play in a setting that required them. In addition I can trust my players to not need or want alignment for their characters. (In the same way I've begun to discard the Sanity system- they handle it themselves just fine.)So I cut alignment out. There should be a section in the DMG about how alignments are unnecessary for many settings (or that alternate systems might be required).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Professor Phobos, post: 1508971, member: 18883"] The alignment system is useful for two major reasons. 1. As a training wheel for new players who might not be inclined to naturally develop character personalities. This I find is rarely necessary, but I'm stuck running online games and have thus far avoided "newbies." 2. As a method for maintaining a certain kind of morality for a given setting. "Stock D&D" has an absolute, black and white moral code, and usually a pantheon of deities that reflect said code. Likewise, we have alignment dependent rules and spells. In this sense it is no different than other personality mechanics, like those in Pendragon. (Or, in a sense, Sanity in Cthulhu.) Personally, I've found alignment counter-intuitive and I've never developed or wanted to play in a setting that required them. In addition I can trust my players to not need or want alignment for their characters. (In the same way I've begun to discard the Sanity system- they handle it themselves just fine.) So I cut alignment out. There should be a section in the DMG about how alignments are unnecessary for many settings (or that alternate systems might be required). [/QUOTE]

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