Celebrim said:
In practice most players should play a neutral character. Playing an aligned character is difficult, and deserves some leeway. After all, mortals aren't perfect. The biggest source of friction - the fact that changing alignments would cost you a level - is done away with, so what's the problem?[
I'll answer the question first, then come back to the more interesting point.
The common problems are three:
1) If your alignment changes it can debar you from a class (cleric, paladin, druid, bard, barbarian, monk) for no very good reason but that you and the GM disagree on some moral matter. This just seems unnecessary and unhelpful. Paladins aren't actually a broken class if allowed to fall short of the GM's ideal of the code, so it doesn't do any harm to game balance to allow the issue of wrongdoing, falling and so on to be actually worked out in the course of play (eg the paladin's NPC comrades start shunning him, the druid finds that the trees no longer welcome her, etc). This can be done without mechanically purging the character - which, in D&D, just sucks for the player.
2) As a sort of generalised version of the above, some GMs only allow good PCs (or at least disallow evil PCs). This means that alignment change can cut one out of the game.
Now, if there are real "social contract" issues - eg one player wants to roleplay a violent murderer of human civilians and the GM and other players don't - then those have to be resolved. But the alignment rules don't help with this. If anything, they exacerbate it, by concealing the real social contract conflict and presenting it under the cloak of a game mechanical problem.
3) Following on somewhat from number 2), there is something quite insulting about being told by others that one's convictions are evil, if one thinks them good. The argument is sometimes put that "good" in D&D doesn't really mean good, and that "evil" doesn't really mean evil - that they are simply mechanical labels with no meaning outside the game - but this contention is wrong (IMO) for at least 2 reasons: (i) many GMs forbid evil PCs, because they don't want to GM for players whose PCs indulge in wickedness, and this only makes sense if "evil" means something in the neighbourhood of evil; (ii) that demons, orcs etc are of evil alignment is meant to justify PCs fighting and killing them, and this justification only works if "evil" means something in the neighbourhood of evil.
Celebrim said:
And the refuge of playing a character that isn't aligned has always been there if you wanted it.
I may be wrong about 4e, but I see this as something new, and different from playing a Neutral character. The difference is this: a Neutral character is always in danger of being relabelled by the GM, with all the consequences attendant on that that I've set out above. Whereas, if my understanding is right, an Unaligned character is never in danger of being reballed unless s/he actively seeks out an affilation with Good or Evil.
Now, maybe I'm wrong in my guestimation of the 4e mechanics. If so, then it doesn't achieve the improvements I've been spruiking on its behalf.
Celebrim said:
If questions and difficulties are to be avoided, then yes not having questions or answers is certainly an improvement. Over the years I've taken a great deal of pleasure in thinking very deeply about what my characters believe to be true and then playing as if I had conviction - even if I myself didn't believe any of it. This is a fantasy, so picking something up out of a box labeled 'Chaotic Neutral' or 'Lawful Good' is alot more interesting than picking something up labeled 'phenomenalism' (well, may not to a professor of philosophy I grant you).
In my Greyhawk game I did work out a roughly phenomenalist metaphysics for some of the clergy of Pholtus - but that was many years ago when I was an undergraduate with too much time on his hands.
More pertinently, I have nothing against the game raising moral questions. I just want the players and GM to be free to answer them - and perhaps disagree about them - in the course of play.
Some examples of what I mean:
One memorable character I've GMed was a RM sorcerer who was a freed slave, morally and politically committed, but also weak of will and prone to indebtedness (in part through drug addiction, to a herb that would help him regain power points more quickly). In the end he changed allegiances from the government of his own (free) city to the imperial power because they promised him a magistracy. He rationalised this as (in part) a chance to take power and use it to do good.
The character generated a lot of commentary from other players in the game, and obviously playing out the adventures that all this happened in required us to address moral questions. I don't see that D&D alignment rules could have added anything to that endeavour however, and indeed would have got in the way, by forcing a simple label to be put upon a very morally complex individual.
In the same game, that character's friend ended up betraying one of his party members who then got sacrificed on an evil god's altar (at the metagame level, the two players were in agreement that the player of the sacrificed character wanted to introduce a new PC with a different class). Traditional D&D forces me to label that character Evil, I think - but the label adds nothing of interest to the moral issue, and would not have contributed to the very interesting play that resulted.
My current RM game involves two Samurai, a Pure Land Sect Warrior Monk and a more mystical Shingon-type Mind Monk (all probably Lawful in D&D terms), plus another quasi-Samurai warrior mage (probably N or NE in D&D terms), a tree spirit druid (proably N or NG in D&D terms) and a fox spirit archer/enchanter (maybe CN in D&D terms?) working together, in defiance of the will of Heaven and the Lords of Karma (who are also all probably Lawful in D&D terms), to help free a dead god who is trapped in the (Far Realms-style) Void (which is probably Chaotic in D&D terms). Labelling this as law vs chaos doesn't, to me, add very much. The two monks are very different from one another in outlook and motivation, and the samurai different again. And their defiance of Heaven and Karma - presumably, in D&D terms, non-Lawful behaviour, is crucial to the story but does nothing to bring them into any sort of allegiance with the Void. The Mind Monk (who I imagine is strongly LN in D&D terms?) is the most obviously tempted by the "Super-Enlightenment" on offer from the voidal entities - its something too esoteric for the others to really get at - and yet in D&D that would probably require me to say that a LN character is the most tempted by a CN/CE realm, which would make no sense.
These are the play experiences I've had which make me feel that alignment doesn't help the game, and gets in the way of rather than facilitates the exploration of moral philosophy by way of roleplaying.
I'm not saying that the 4e system would necessarily help this sort of play. But I think it is less likely to get in the way of it, because (if I am right in my understanding of it) it does not purport to make alignment a total system.
