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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 4940009" data-attributes="member: 1165">To give a bit of background, I studied psychology a bit in university. For the first year, you had to undergo experiments (helping PhD students and the like). For one such experiment, I was given information about a previously convicted criminal (and, I hasten to add, this was clearly a fictional criminal). Said person served their time and was released, but after 15 years, was arrested for committing the same crime again. I won't discuss the nature of the crime (Eric's grandma rule) but I decided to vote not guilty, since there was a "shadow of a doubt" that the person might not be guilty. Other people did the same experiment, with the amount of time between crimes varying (sometimes 5, 10 or 15 years).I was floored that lots of people disagreed with me (when we saw the results), even for 15 years. Didn't "shadow of a doubt" mean the same thing to different people? And for that matter, shouldn't it be the same regardless of the number of years between crimes? Well, no, it didn't. Similarly, alignment is vague and subjective, and no two people will agree on it.I didn't have a problem with alignment because I only saw DMs enforce it for egregious cases (eg "lawful good" characters engaging in torture).I had bigger problems in 2e for two separate reasons. I started playing DnD in 2e, and both myself and the DMs were inexperienced. A lot of DMs insisted that alignment was "prescriptive". "If you were lawful good, you acted this way", which doesn't make sense to me. I'd rather alignment be "descriptive" of someone's actions. If someone writes lawful good on their character sheet, I might say (if I cared that much about alignment, that was) "prove it". I think this "prescriptive" attitude toward alignment in some groups created the "alignment straightjacket".2e also had a rule problem. If you acted outside your alignment, you could be penalized XP. Not necessarily a problem, depending on your game, but they gave such a horrible example. In one example (I forget if this was the 2e DMG or PH), a "neutral good" PC was deemed by the DM to be lawful good instead. The DM told the player this, then, following the rules, inflicted an XP penalty.The fictional DM didn't:1) Warn the player beforehand. (An experienced DM probably wouldn't make that mistake, but a newbie DM? I've seen it.)2) Discuss whether the player wanted to shift alignments. (Sometimes alignments shift due to character development.)3) Discuss whether the player wrote down the "wrong" alignment on their character sheet when they started play. (A big deal, because two people almost never agree on alignment.)Furthermore, each alignment, if followed strictly, could be a straightjacket. If you have a description like "a lawful good character never lies to allies" you have a problem. You know you should never (heh) use words like "never" and "always" that way. It's even worse if you have something like "a lawful evil character: Always does this. Never does that. Never does that other thing." So what if someone is playing a neutral evil character, and they follow 80% of the rules for lawful evil characters? Are they LE? NE? It's important if they're a cleric, or if the rules dock them XP for not fitting on a strict 9-point grid. It's certainly impossible in real life! I could give examples, but this rant has gone on long enough. (It's possible I'm thinking of a non-DnD example here, or some splatbook. It's been a long time since I've seen such an alignment list.)And IMO, I have never seen a good description of lawful vs chaotic alignments. Literally never. Not even once.</blockquote>

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