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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6098521" data-attributes="member: 4937">I love sidetreks.  If the road goes off long enough, we can always fork.  I'm one of those alignment 'traditionalists', and I believe that the two axis alignment system is the most brilliant short hand system any game has ever created, which is why you see it so frequently used as short hand by nerds describing narratives outside of D&D.  That isn't to say that alignment hasn't been grossly misused and misunderstood over the years, even by various designers, because it has but I find that most peoples problems with it are based off of one of two things.  Either that misunderstanding about what alignment is, or the players own philosophical stance about 'reality' which itself can often be described in short hand as an alignment stance.   For example, some players will insist that 'good' and 'evil' and 'chaos' and 'law' aren't real.  However, from the standpoint of the game world, this is the stance of a True Neutral who believes that what is really 'real' is balance or perhaps something else not describable within the easy two axis framework.   However, that's a little less interesting of a problem than people who reject alignment because they misunderstand it or can't figure out how to leverage it.To begin with, the statement, "Forcing a player to stick to their alignment forces them to not play a character than changes or grows", is based off off the huge misnomer that most literary change or growth is best explained as an alignment shift.   You see players simultaneously claiming that alignment isn't real but that they also need alignment changes to explain the growth in their character.  In point of fact, literary characters rarely change their alignments.   Take the most obvious example.  In Tolkien's stories, the characters are radically transformed by their adventures.  Bilbo, Frodo, Merry, Pippin, Sam, Gimli, and Thorin are not the same people at the end of the story than they were at the beginning.  They have changed radically.  They have grown.  Bilbo is less fearful, more thoughtful, more compassionate, and far less shallow and self-centered than he was at the beginning of the story, but there is no indication at all that his alignment has changed.  His fundamental moral outlook has remained the same, he just has a deeper, wider, wiser expression of those beliefs and has lost some of the rudeness, cowardice, and apathy that had hidden his true nature from not only the Dwarfs but even himself.   Gandalf however knew all along.By viewing alignment as something that must change to reflect changes in the character, you a making the fundamental mistake of thinking that alignment is the sole descriptor of a character, that alignment is the same as personality, and that alignment is the same as feelings.  It's a shallow mistaken understanding of what is being described.  Alignment in a literary story rarely changes except as a dramatic moment.  It's the moment when Jean Val Jean falls down at his knees and weeps for having stolen the sous.  It's the moment when Darth Vader turns to the light side.  If you feel the need to change your alignment on a more moment to moment basis without dramatic shifts in focus, its probably because the character you imagine doesn't have an alignment.  He hasn't accepted that piety or philosophy should be a guiding framework for how he lives his life.  He thinks all that is BS, and he's living life according to some other standard.   Characters in literature don't change alignment easily.  Javert reaches a moment where he has to change his alignment, and its so traumatic for him that he kills himself rather than face it.  That's story about alignment.  Not random and easy drift.When I hear about character journeys that people describe as needing the flexibility of no alignment, usually I feel that the journey may be interesting but how they've leveraged alignment during that journey isn't interesting.  One example that has lots of strong backing from literature is the character which has an alignment, but which believes that they are of a completely different alignment.  This is the character of Han Solo.  We have lots of indication that when Han comes back, it isn't because his alignment has changed, but because he's discovering he's really being true to himself.  He never really was the apathetic hardened self-interested person he was trying to be.  Characters that lack self-awareness are staples of literature.   When you look at alignment journeys, consider whether you need any alignment initially other than neutral or whether it might be more interesting to consider being a character who thinks that they are good or lawful or whatever, but really is something else.   Or maybe someone who is trying but failing to be something else.  Is your good character going to convert to evil, or is your good character already evil but believes he isn't?First of all, I don't think there needs to an expectation of experience reward for changing your alignment.  It's not fundamentally good RP to change your alignment any more than it is fundamentally bad RP to do so.  Secondly, gaming your alignment IMO is far more common than being thoughtful about it.  And given Gygax's assumed agendas of play (challenge, for example), there was more need to enforce not gaming alignment, than there was a need to support narrative empowerment.  I can agree with you about there being no restrictions on alignment for a class.   However, I don't believe that because I think alignment is bad or because I like 4e's bland take on alignment, but because I think restrictions on alignment for class is a fundamentally a primative view about what a class is.</blockquote>

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