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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 3610499" data-attributes="member: 30001">GIZMO'S ALIGNMENT SYSTEMIMO the alignment system has problems as written.  This probably isn't anything new to some people.  To others, it suits their game just fine.  That's cool.  What I would like to do is submit my system for comment.  It's not so much a rules system as it is a framework with which to develop a set of houserules.  Those houserules will retain "good", "evil" and such as features of the campaign where they are best used, and remove them from areas of the game where they are more likely to cause problems in the DMs adjudication of the game.  (The specifics of how I use these principles are bound up in my rules for new spells, magic items, and so forth and not easily posted.)THE PROBLEMS AS I SEE THEMThe first problem is that alignment takes a whole range of motivations and potential philosophies and fits them into one of nine possible categories.  IMO that's an oversimplification.  It leads to problems of interpretation - "what is good" and stuff like that.  Just visit a DnD message board on any given day and check out the daily alignment thread - someone posting a question like "can a paladin do such and such".  It's not that people don't know what "good" means - it just that they only have a hazy idea of it, and in a game like DnD there are just too many variables to judge it.Which leads to the second problem, which is that the DM has to judge it!  Everyone in the RAW has an alignment, and if they start thinking or behaving in ways that goes against that alignment, the DM is suppose to change that persons alignment accordingly.  And perhaps the player loses powers as a result.  This sets up a potential conflict of interest between player and DM.  And whereas the combat system might do the same thing (monsters trying to kill player characters also creates a conflict of interest), the combat system in DnD is much better defined - and so the DM is in a more comfortable place making judgments that go against the player.A third problem is that, because everyone has an alignment, everyone knows that everyone has an alignment.  And so one wonders why the world has not divided into nine different countries based on alignments.  Fliers would be distributed that say "come, live in sunny Camelot, we're all Lawful Good, unlike those other guys".  The expectation is that people know their own alignments, so even if a fraction of folks would be willing to misrepresent themselves for some reason, most people would not find it advantageous.  I wouldn't want to be the only Chaotic Evil person in a Lawful Evil kingdom - or have to rely on non-detection spells for my survival.  And it just doesn't match the characterstics of fantasy/literature/history that we use for inspiration.  There's nothing really like it in any story that I'm familiar with.  Convoluted explanations are given as to why kingdoms don't advertise what their alignments are, but IMO they are unconvincing.  People in the stories aren't making decisions about alignment in the way that they do in DnD.  Good and evil exist, certainly, but they are ideals, embodied by only divine creatures.  Examples of a mortal being good exist, like King Arthur, but there are times when he does things that are obviously not good.  In DnD, in spite of the existence of alignment descriptors ([good], [lawful], etc.) for some creatures, a Lawful Good archon, and a lawful good mortal are treated the same way by most spells and game elements.  Granted - DnD is not a literature simulation - so this is only one of many factors.So I actually would prefer less certainty when it comes to alignment.  I don't want to necessarily have an opinion about the alignment of Joe Commoner NPC in my campaign.  Nor do I want PCs in my campaign to cast a spell and instantly know most everything of significance about an NPC.  Is the NPC good?  That should be a deep philosophical question for the most part, along the lines of "what is this person capable of". Not something easily resolved by a color-coded system.  I also don't want to nitpick my players about their choices - or get into the kind of debates.  Maybe their idea of a paladin is a character like "Dirty Harry".  I catagorize such characters as chaotic rather than lawful.  But if you act in chaotic ways in order to defend the law, does that make you chaotic or lawful?  And does a wanton disregard for collateral damage in the course of fighting evil make a person non-good?  IMO these are thousands-of-years-old philosophical questions - I'm not going to convincingly answer them for a player who doesn't want to lose their powers or be labelled as something that they don't feel they are.</blockquote>

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