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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3680054" data-attributes="member: 4937">I agree, which is why I said that the problem was often basically a lapse in DM/player communication and why I repeated the phrase 'springing on'.  Short of a curse of somesort, a player should always know when his actions constitute something sufficient to change alignment.  This belief is not only based on meta-game consideration, but also on what I feel is a reasonable in game spiritual framework.  It seems really unlikely to me that ones basic nature would change and there not be some conscious indication of a rejection of past beliefs and an acceptance of new ones.  Otherwise, it doesn't seem like such a change would stick with much force.  Instead of a change in alignment, it would likely be a lapse in alignment, which I see as something totally different.  I think basically good people can commit acts of murder in moments of passion or as a result in a lapse in judgment, and they may not necessarily stop being good (or wanting to be good) as a result of it.So I'd associate alignment change more with either conscious decision or an ongoing pattern of behavior, and what to give fair warning to the player what I was thinking before it became an issue.  (Actually, its been a long time since I had this particular problem.)Yes.  It gets particularly bad when you have DMs and players who themselves have beliefs which could be strongly characterized by some alignment.  Since most people tend to characterize 'good' as "what I believe", you can have players/DMs at the table whose alignment map is completely at odds with each other (say a LG and a CN who both want to define the alignment 'good' as conforming to thier own personal beliefs).  When this happens, an in game disagreement tends to turn into a fight over something neither party wants to relinquish because each party believes that there is some real world value at stake.This is the classic case, but it's been a while since I had to deal with this exact issue.  For one thing, the game has gotten away from 'lawful good is the bestest alignment', so there is less metagame reason to insist on it from an accounting standpoint.  A more typical situation I run into now is that the player believes things that are traditionally accepted as evil, but does not wish to believe that they are evil and so labels what they believe as 'good'.  This sort of player then will insist that there is nothing wrong - and in fact its  in making pacts with fiends, using sex to manipulate people, stealing from 'faceless organizations', murdering innocents in order to obtain a goal, and so forth.  That gets to be problimatic, but fortunately that type rarely endures my settings and goes to find a DM more inclined to give them what they want from a game.No, not always.  But I think that it should always be a situation where fair warning was given and a clear explanation of what your standards where were foreknown.   "John, I warned you when X and Y happened, that if your PC Bob continued to avoid doing good even when it didn't cost him anything, and taking large risks to himself in order to see harm done to someone that I'd have to move Bob the Flayer's alignment from chaotic neutral down to chaotic evil.  I think we've reached that point."</blockquote>

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