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I don't get the dislike of alignment as a character-building concept
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<blockquote data-quote="Wombat" data-source="post: 5708378" data-attributes="member: 8447"><p>I guess my problem with Alignment a la D&D is that it is both a guideline and an absolute. For PCs it is a guidelines, a suggestion, in broad stroke, as to how they should very generally act, with the proviso that characters are mutable ... heck they might even change alignment, at least in some editions. For monsters and mechanics, however, it is an absolute, an unchanging, unchangeable, carved-in-granite-then-set-in-carbonite exactitude that may not be altered in any way shape or form.</p><p></p><p>How does Detect Good (for example) work? Does it discover tendencies or absolutes? Is a character Good simply because he says he is Good or because he actually does good deeds? And who is to (broadly and cosmically) judge what is actually Good versus Evil? (Heck, I could get into a whole sub-discussion here on various mythologies and how those deities have been ported into D&D and how Good/Evil/Law/Chaos doesn't really work, much less portfolios.) If lying is Evil in a game and a Good PC just lied, does Detect Good not work on him? </p><p></p><p>Agh! This is why I moved to games without alignments and when I came back to D&D I pretty much dropped alignment altogether... The concept boggles me too quickly.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Wombat, post: 5708378, member: 8447"] I guess my problem with Alignment a la D&D is that it is both a guideline and an absolute. For PCs it is a guidelines, a suggestion, in broad stroke, as to how they should very generally act, with the proviso that characters are mutable ... heck they might even change alignment, at least in some editions. For monsters and mechanics, however, it is an absolute, an unchanging, unchangeable, carved-in-granite-then-set-in-carbonite exactitude that may not be altered in any way shape or form. How does Detect Good (for example) work? Does it discover tendencies or absolutes? Is a character Good simply because he says he is Good or because he actually does good deeds? And who is to (broadly and cosmically) judge what is actually Good versus Evil? (Heck, I could get into a whole sub-discussion here on various mythologies and how those deities have been ported into D&D and how Good/Evil/Law/Chaos doesn't really work, much less portfolios.) If lying is Evil in a game and a Good PC just lied, does Detect Good not work on him? Agh! This is why I moved to games without alignments and when I came back to D&D I pretty much dropped alignment altogether... The concept boggles me too quickly. [/QUOTE]
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I don't get the dislike of alignment as a character-building concept
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