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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 471925" data-attributes="member: 4937">JD: If you mean a full descriptor of a person's traits, then no alignment never will serve that purpose usefully.  Many alignment systems don't even attempt this at all.  For instance, WEG Star Wars had an alignment system that was non-descriptive, and only served to lump actions into two major categories.As for lumping things into 'us' and 'them', I don't think this is necessarily even a good goal, and I think it is unfortunate that too often people use this as the sole purpose of alignment.  I think it ludicrous how some players who detect evil suddenly whip out thier swords and murder someone based on the fact that that person is evil.  So?  What crime did he commit?  Was it deserving of death?  Is society at large going to trust your word that you detected evil?  One of my main reasons for wanting to water down the divination system is to avoid this sort of jumping to conclusions.  If the players know that thier divinations occassionally produce the wrong answer, they will be more likely to think about thier actions.I've played only a few games that wouldn't really benifit from an alignment system, and they only because thier focus is so narrow and the alignment system is implicit in the game.  Call of Cthullu and Chill don't need alignment systems.  In games like this, you don't have to ask who the heroes and who the monsters are and whether or not opposing the destruction of humanity is a good thing.  Alignment questions rarely come up, and if moral ambiguities are forced on the heroes, a simple insanity check solves the problem satisfactorily.  I suppose though that in this sence, the insanity score is the alignment system, so maybe I'm wrong about Call of Cthullu not having one. Presumably most game masters would understand that if you had to burn down the orphanage to stop Great Cthullu from arising that you'd have to lose some sanity points.  The game is so black and white that alignment is a non-issue.But, for the most part, alignment is serving a purpose that you don't mention.  Alignment provides structure to the role play experience.  If you don't provide some mechanic that relates choices to consequences, or limits character freedom, then with all but the best RPers you end up with people not role playing but game playing.  Alignment provides guidance to players old and new by forcing them to stop and consider whether the action that they are contemplating is the sort of action that the character they are playing would do.  This is a good thing.  Some alignment systems, like WoD's demeanor/nature system, go one step further by providing mechanics that reward players for acting in a manner in which the character was concieved.Many games provide thier alignment system obliquely to varying degrees to provide this goal of structure (and structure of goals!).  D20 moderns alliegance system is no more than a broader version of the 'secret society' system used in games like Gamma World or Paranoia.Remember, one of the things that is very hard to achieve in RPG's is forcing the player to accept personality limitations and if you like 'failings' which plague all real people.  This is most notable in things like torture.  Unless you provide a mechanic to force a PC to confess, no PC ever confesses no matter how they are tortured.   The player is DISTANT from the character.  It is easy to kill.  It is hard to get players to empathize with the emotional consequences of actions. Unless you provide a mechanic of fatigue, players only get tired when it suits them.  Unless you provide a mechanic of emotional trauma (or growth), no experience ever has lasting significance to a character.Alignment is one of the ways you draw them closer. It is a simplistic mechanic for talking about restricting actions according to personality, just as fatigue, pain, and emotional trauma restrict actions in other realistic ways.  Real people act according to belief systems, cultural tradiations, personalities and so forth.  Alignment is a first step toward forcing a player onto the right road.  It is only a first step, but if you don't provide it, in my experience the RP doesn't get better.  Instead, personality becomes an entirely shiftable thing that players modify to meet the circumstances.</blockquote>

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