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<blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 8616710" data-attributes="member: 2525">Nothing in the game &quot;needs&quot; to exist.Lots of things exist in D&amp;D which are not about mechanics. In fact, many argue (including me) that it's the non-mechanical aspects of 5e that made it so popular in the first place.Alignment, for me, serves as a useful shorthand for specific NPCs in published adventures. That doesn't &quot;need&quot; to be there and it isn't having a mechanical effect, but it is having a useful organizational effect on my ability to DM. It is a shorthand reminder to me of some larger personality and background aspects of that NPC. If it varies from my expectation it's a reminder to check the description further, for instance. This is a very useful tool in my games. It's OK if it's not useful in yours.I don't know why you keep going on about characters. Alignment is most often used by DMs in my experience, not players. I don't care if alignment is replaced with something else for characters but I do care about it as a DM for NPCs.I disagree. I saw the negative effect happen in Candlekeep in a direct way. There is an adventure written with alignment in mind. An NPC was listed as good originally, though the visual description of the NPC would normally imply evil and only buried further down in the longer form description did it say they behaved in a good manner. WOTC then wholesale removed alignment from the adventures, WITHOUT consulting with the authors in advance of doing that, and it caused confusion particularly with that particular NPC. IF the PCs happened to wander into that encounter in an unexpected way and the DM was playing catchup on that encounter on the fly (which is not an unusual occurrence for many experienced DMs) they were prone to being caught off guard and running the NPC as evil by accident. Which messed up that part of the adventure. If the shorthand had been left in, literally just two initials of NG, that harm would have been prevented, with no harm to your game.Yes, it is in fact badwrongfun that you're declaring it has no &quot;real&quot; place in D&amp;D. That's about as clear an example of badwrongfun as one can produce. It's your use of the term &quot;real&quot; which makes it clear you do in fact think &quot;true&quot; fans shouldn't use it. What else did you mean by &quot;real&quot; in that sentence. Are you retracting that? DO you think it can have a &quot;real&quot; use for some people playing D&amp;D?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mistwell, post: 8616710, member: 2525"] Nothing in the game "needs" to exist. Lots of things exist in D&D which are not about mechanics. In fact, many argue (including me) that it's the non-mechanical aspects of 5e that made it so popular in the first place. Alignment, for me, serves as a useful shorthand for specific NPCs in published adventures. That doesn't "need" to be there and it isn't having a mechanical effect, but it is having a useful organizational effect on my ability to DM. It is a shorthand reminder to me of some larger personality and background aspects of that NPC. If it varies from my expectation it's a reminder to check the description further, for instance. This is a very useful tool in my games. It's OK if it's not useful in yours. I don't know why you keep going on about characters. Alignment is most often used by DMs in my experience, not players. I don't care if alignment is replaced with something else for characters but I do care about it as a DM for NPCs. I disagree. I saw the negative effect happen in Candlekeep in a direct way. There is an adventure written with alignment in mind. An NPC was listed as good originally, though the visual description of the NPC would normally imply evil and only buried further down in the longer form description did it say they behaved in a good manner. WOTC then wholesale removed alignment from the adventures, WITHOUT consulting with the authors in advance of doing that, and it caused confusion particularly with that particular NPC. IF the PCs happened to wander into that encounter in an unexpected way and the DM was playing catchup on that encounter on the fly (which is not an unusual occurrence for many experienced DMs) they were prone to being caught off guard and running the NPC as evil by accident. Which messed up that part of the adventure. If the shorthand had been left in, literally just two initials of NG, that harm would have been prevented, with no harm to your game. Yes, it is in fact badwrongfun that you're declaring it has no "real" place in D&D. That's about as clear an example of badwrongfun as one can produce. It's your use of the term "real" which makes it clear you do in fact think "true" fans shouldn't use it. What else did you mean by "real" in that sentence. Are you retracting that? DO you think it can have a "real" use for some people playing D&D? [/QUOTE]

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