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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5817325" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think that this is a pretty unreasonable thing to say. There have always been debates about the proper place of alignment in D&amp;D.Back in an early number of White Dwarf, Lewis Pulsipher criticised the move from 3 to 9 alignments. In the mid-80s (#101, I think) Dragon ran an article about how to take alignment out of the game without disrupting the mechanics.I personally think that 9-point alignment is ludicrous. It corresponds to no real-world system of either moral description or moral advocacy. As presented by Gygax in AD&amp;D, it expressly draws upon contemporary moral and political notions (the rights set out in the Declaration of Independence, and notions of human rights) - causing endless problems when these are then applied to a quintessentially premodern archetype, the paladin.On the assumption that D&amp;D will continue to have alignment, I prefer either classic Law/Chaos alignment or its slightly more detailed 4e alternative (for which I voted in the poll). Unlike 9-point alignment these systems make it clear that the alignment system is embedded in a fictional cosmology (Moorcockian Law vs Chaos, on in the case of 4e the Gods vs the Primordials/Demons), and make no pretense to the system being any sort of general tool for moral evaluation or description.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5817325, member: 42582"] I think that this is a pretty unreasonable thing to say. There have always been debates about the proper place of alignment in D&D. Back in an early number of White Dwarf, Lewis Pulsipher criticised the move from 3 to 9 alignments. In the mid-80s (#101, I think) Dragon ran an article about how to take alignment out of the game without disrupting the mechanics. I personally think that 9-point alignment is ludicrous. It corresponds to no real-world system of either moral description or moral advocacy. As presented by Gygax in AD&D, it expressly draws upon contemporary moral and political notions (the rights set out in the Declaration of Independence, and notions of human rights) - causing endless problems when these are then applied to a quintessentially premodern archetype, the paladin. On the assumption that D&D will continue to have alignment, I prefer either classic Law/Chaos alignment or its slightly more detailed 4e alternative (for which I voted in the poll). Unlike 9-point alignment these systems make it clear that the alignment system is embedded in a fictional cosmology (Moorcockian Law vs Chaos, on in the case of 4e the Gods vs the Primordials/Demons), and make no pretense to the system being any sort of general tool for moral evaluation or description. [/QUOTE]

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