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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7068678" data-attributes="member: 996">I'm right there with you. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  And, y'know, 0e was just Law v Chaos, too.  You could still go that way in 4e, though, Lawful Good (just generally refer to it IC as LAW) vs Chaotic Evil (IC:  CHAOS).  Demons &c are the enemy, Devils are natural, if perilous, allies.  'Good' & 'Unaligned' elves &c who chafe against the organization and responsibilities of Law are part of the problem of Chaos.  You could even take it the other direction, couching it as Freedom vs Oppression instead of Law/Chaos:  the oppression by some power structure (an alignment-Evil Empire, even) or calcifying force of supernatural Order (Unaligned) is the main foe, and if loosing demons on the world helps weaken them, it's worth it.  Too bad those Lawful Good paladins &c are duped into defending the evil, they're just collateral damage.   Or just (Moorcockian) Law & Chaos.  Or choose one or the other for your campaign's 'conflict theme.'   Right?But... I doubt it was that.  4e was still D&D, and as many mechanical sacred cows as it slaughtered and as much cannon that it re-imagined, it was still carrying massive quantities of D&D baggage.  What happened with alignment seems obvious:  They concluded - maybe from surveys, focus groups, Contact Outer Planes, or other means - that people (potential new players, I'd assume) were confused by certain alignments, especially the seemingly-contradictory-to-some Lawful Evil ("b- but, laws are good!") & Chaotic Good ("b- but, chaos is bad!"), and also, clearly, by the neutral-component alignments - perhaps even simply by the large number of alignments.  So, they simplified the alignments, as with so many other aspects of the game (or 'dumbed down' as the first cohort of edition warriors tried, unsuccessfully, to paint it - ultimately, going for the opposite: 'too complex').  Five alignments, 4 of them fairly intuitive and B&W, with 'unaligned' as the catch-all for any more-complex, shades-of-grey or merely different motivations.From the descriptions, CG & NG were clearly folded into Good; LE & NE into Evil; and LN, CN, TN, and the ever-popular 'screw this alignment BS' into 'Unaligned.'   Yeah, that would've been a serious spanner in the works.  IMHO, that's why they came up with the Primal Spirits instead of making Druids &c 'Primordial Source,' which would have fit very well, thematically, and played to the legendary sweep of the Dawn War, and even indirectly evoked the historical Druid.</blockquote>

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