D&D General Do you use Alignment in your D&D games?

[J.Quondam]

Take it or leave it. It's usually ignored, anyway.
I much prefer using oaths, bonds, personality traits, codes, etc, to guide RP and provide "soft" behavioral constraints. And I haven't used alignment constraints for classes or organizations, or magic based on alignment, since I was kid.
That said, I also generally have little problem with "inherent" alignments attached to outsiders and certain monsters, not least because IMCs such beings tend to be either unique or else specifically built to act that that way. Also, "unaligned" is fine where that applies.

 

[Laurefindel]

I want to say « no », but tradition is too engrained in me and my players that it’s always there, if only in a subconscious level.

i do pay attention to alignment to gauge who is on whose side. It doesn’t matter whether one side is more good or evil, but orcs and the human kingdom will typically be at war, or at least ennemies with diametrically opposed views on how the other should act/live/think.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Got it. I think I do the same thing re: outlining general expectations about PC behavior, I just don't really use Alignment to do it. I have a session zero document with some boilerplate stuff in it along these lines. Unless I specifically alter it, my stipulations are:

"Create characters who, while not necessarily saints, are on board with the key dynamics of being willing & able to work as part of a group, and being willing and able to go on adventures, and ultimately behave in a more-or-less heroic manner most of the time."

I find this always works, and I run for an average of 20+ different players per month. If I had a player who really couldn't deal with that, then I don't think I'd really continue to play with them - I don't think reminding them of their Alignment would help.

The rules never really seem to explain the alignments well enough for anybody to agree on them. So like you, if they are going to be a factor in my games (they're not always), then we have a discussion about it at the beginning of the campaign and open up further discussions as needed. There is no penalty (or benefit) for playing one alignment over another. So its neither a punishment nor a reward if it does change. That is not a reflection of the player, but a reflection on the character who may be either a) changed his perspectives, or b) fits a different alignment better than how the player originally perceived during conception. But it can be a useful tool when players need to ask "what would my character do?" in a given situation.

Alignments just make sense to me in D&D, and maybe I'm just more comfortable using them with my players than others. Its not a requirement, and I can see how it is easier to ignore. But I have seen these discussions over the years on the subject, and watched it and other aspects of the game continue to be vilified until it just seems normal to think of it as outright wrongbadfun. Its not. If it works for someone, great. If not, no problem. We don't need to have a right answer here.

 

[Vaalingrade]

It's such a common trope that people that have never played D&D have a general idea of what alignment means.

They know that Batman is all of them and that Chaotic Evil Sandwiches are soup.

 

[Gradine]

Okay, alignment chart memes are usually golden

 

[Amrûnril]

For me, it really depends on what it means to "use alignment".

Do characters make moral and ethical decisions? Absolutely.
Can positions on good-evil and law-chaos axes* describe a portion of the variation in how different characters make those decisions? Sure.
Do I use alignment descriptions to describe characters? Sometimes. It varies depending on expected role in the story, level of character development, and strength of alignment related tendencies.
Does alignment have metaphysical significance? I make a deliberate point of not having canonical answers to metaphysical or cosmological questions, so that will always remain open to interpretation by individual characters.

*I'm firmly of the opinion that alignment should be understood as a set of principal component axes rather than a set of discrete boxes.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Even if everybody has their own take on alignment, I still enjoy using my own take as a guideline for roleplaying both my own PCs and NPCs. I also found that it helped me gain an interest in looking at real world ideologies that seem to exhibit characteristics of what I consider an alignment to be like.

I also tend to prefer the Law-Chaos axis, as it's easier for me to create definitions for Lawful and Chaotic acts than Good and Evil acts. Does a given act lead to a more orderly world with less unpredictability? Then it's Lawful. Does an act help make a more unpredictable world where the status quo is in flux? Then it's Chaotic.

One of my favorite PCs was a Chaotic Neutral fighter who gave to the poor charitably not out of the goodness of his heart, but because he hated the status quo imposed by the wealthy and was curious to see what the poor would do with sudden massive influxes of wealth. Without the concept of "Chaotic Neutral" (at least as I understand it), I wouldn't have considered such a motivation for a character's charity.

 

[Blue]

Alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive. It's like saying "I'm going to run a game without mentioning color". There's still color, even if you don't use a term to describe it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive. It's like saying "I'm going to run a game without mentioning color". There's still color, even if you don't use a term to describe it.

No. Alignment is a bizarre D&D specific incoherent attempt at codifying morality. Any game will most likely involve some sort of ethics and morality, but it doesn't need to involve alignment.

 

[Cadence]

Alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive. It's like saying "I'm going to run a game without mentioning color". There's still color, even if you don't use a term to describe it.

It feels like some might argue that nine point alignment is akin to the set of words for color before "blue" separated from "green". Its limitations might outweigh its use.