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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9369943" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think the problem is this: that people expect alignment to help them adjudicate good and evil, when in fact alignment presupposes an understanding of what is good and what is evil.All alignment does is set up a conflict about how best to achieve good - by way of social organisation and order, or by way of individual self-realisation?When you combine (i) an aspiration to have good and evil defined rather than assumed with (ii) the terrible gameplay (which Gygax actively encourages) that flows from the GM telling players how they should play their PCs, it is no surprise that alignment produces a bad experience.I've been arguing (ii) on these boards for 15-ish years - that play is best when players decide what their PCs convictions and commitments demand of them (this is why I strongly disagree with [USER=6801228]@Chaosmancer[/USER] that the attitudes of the gods are the sole province of the GM).When it comes to (i), I think the issue is a bit more subtle, but I first set out my view on this nearly 10 years ago: <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/narrativist-9-point-alignment.451419/" target="_blank">"Narrativist" 9-point alignment</a>I guess the TL;DR is this:*If a group can't work together in the way they accommodate players' play of their PCs into the moral logic and cosmology of their fantasy world, I doubt a rulebook can do much to help; *If a group is not interested in the question as to whether law or chaos is the best way to achieve good, then the 9-point alignment system has nothing to offer them.</blockquote>

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