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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6123493" data-attributes="member: 42582">What Tovec says does not speak for me, and what AbdulAlhazred says largely does speak for me.The assumption that the only way to achieve a game in which players will play a paragon of virtue is to make their class abilities hostage to GM adjudication, is in my view deeply flawed. In fact, I know from experience that it is a false assumption. Because - as posted in some detail upthread - I have run multiple campaigns with rich and complex paladin PCs, who forego various expedient options in the pursuit of virtue, without any mechanical threat to their class abilities.Furthermore, the idea of GM-adjudicated alignment in my view is expressly at odds with the goal of playing a PC who is a paragon of virtue - because it robs the player of the agency to express his/her conception of virtue through play, and instead imposes the GM as a moral arbiter. The suggestion from some that what the GM would be applying would not be "real" morality but "in-fiction" morality only makes things worse, because it means the paladin is no longer a paragon of virtue at all, but rather a GM-directed paragon of some purely imaginary value. For me, that has no point or appeal at all as a character in an RPG.</blockquote>