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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4277985" data-attributes="member: 42582">That is not the problem. The problem is the poorly-implemented attempt to use mechanics to reinforce social contract.Another example: judging from letters to the Forum in Dragon magazine from the mid-80s, a singificant role for alignment was to try and stop players from having their PCs kill innocent villagers, disregard local rulers and town guards, etc.These things are (plausibly) more evil than stabbing someone in self-defence or the defence of others. But I think that the best way to get a game in which players don't have their PCs do these things is to be frank about it at the social contract level. This is what the 4e PHB does, by giving upfront reasons as to why a player may not want to play an evil PC or have a cleric or paladin serve an evil god.Trying to do this sort of stuff via the alignment system is silly. And the ludicrous numbers of ultimately futile alignment debates that are as old as the game itself (futile because they are not useful contributions to moral philosophy, but rather pointless attempts to show that, by the rules of the game, player A does/does not have the right moral judgement to be permitted to play a paladin in GM B's game) .Alignment has a number of features that differentiate it from other game-mechanical domains in which disagreement might arise: it is an attempt to enforce social contract via mechanics; and (partially as a consequence of this) it not only invites the players at the table to express opinions about one another's moral character, but it requires that a definitive moral assessment be given before play can take place.Nowhere that I can recall does a 1st ed D&D text discuss this issue. Nor does the otherwise quite user-friendly Moldvay Basic rulebook, to the best of my recollection. Roger Moore did have an article discussing it in relation to Paladins, which was reproduced in Best of Dragon 3. I'll note that the contrast with 4e is marked - it is very upfront about this sort of thing.But even if we are charitable - earlier rulebooks can be expected to be less well-written in certain respects, afterall - we are still left with the clunky attempt to enforce social contract via mechanics which are a standing invitation to coercive GMing, and which leave the player without control over one of the mechanically highly significant features of his or her character.</blockquote>

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