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Message: <blockquote data-quote="conanb" data-source="post: 1869968" data-attributes="member: 17930">Good vs Evil? Players don't decide, it's in God's Hands.I think the key thing I preach to my players about alignment is that it doesn't matter about what they think about their actions, but how the god's interpret their actions. This has led to problems where a cleric was unable to commit an act his god wanted (the death of a relative innocent) because that person was key to the plans of an evil deity. The person was wholly unaware of their heritage and part in the plan. With a chance to strike this innocent down, the cleric said "I can't." To which their god punished them by taking away their power. The key aspect to remember about these fantasy worlds is that the God's exist. Player's intrpretations of Good and Evil are nice, but ultimately the power lies in the hands of the Gods. I almost always hand down rulings like this. Even on fighters who wonder why all of a sudden a protect evil spell is affecting them. "Well, perhaps your god has deemed you evil for some actions you've done." This has led to some interesting situations, as well as occasional trips to a cleric or someone else to figure out how to atone for past sins. This is how I use alignment in my game, or at least try to. What I'm trying to avoid are endless discussions on what's good or evil. This used to happen all the time, with one player or another doing something that someone else thought was evil or good. Then endless discussions on the rights of prisoners, the innocent, killing sentient beings, etc. If you leave these things up to the players to define, that's fine but brew a pot of coffee and maybe pick up a book is my recommendation. In reality, it's just a game mechanic, and as the DM one of your jobs is to keep the game going. Don't be afraid to wade in and hand down a ruling, even if it is wrong. If everyone was frozen about handing down judgements, our legal system would have collapsed a long time ago. Luckily, a lot of judges say "What the hell, I'm only human," and make a ruling. That's your job as a DM. Keep the game going, settle differneces of opinion, and generally make sure people are enjoying the game (yourself included). But at the end of the day, alignment is one of those things that pops up in everyone's game sometime. You have to figure out how to address it eventually.</blockquote>

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