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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 4950489" data-attributes="member: 32740">Personally, I believe that "clunky and often misunderstood by players," is far more accurate. SOME artifacts in a given edition were linked to a certain alignment. You're painting with a hopelessly broad brush here. And precisely the wrong way to actually use it. Once again, alignment is not a straightjacket. You can't take an individual, say he's XY alignment, and suggest that's ALL that he is. Alignment does not encompass ALL his philosophy, religion, morals and ethics. They are not succinctly summed up in that alignment dictating that he cannot, MUST not evidence behaviors which might suggest any other alignment at any time. Oh it's great fun to argue about what alignment JFK or Gandalf was but it misses the point about how alignment would have been used by the PLAYER of the PC's of JFK or Gandalf. Did the alignment that JFK's player had written on his character sheet ever provide guidance for choosing his characters actions? Was JFK's player CONSTRAINED by that alignment in deciding what his character would do and why? Was he able to shift alignments? Were his actions appropriate reactions to in-game events with alignment still providing the PLAYER a general point of view even if his immediate actions might better suggest a different alignment? Was his alignment still a useful general reflection of his characters morals and ethics? Being LG doesn't mean you CANNOT do something pointlessly loathesome. It just means you aren't SUPPOSED to; aren't EXPECTED to; and preferrably thus have strong motivations dictated by in-game events for acting CONTRARY to what your alignment suggests. And once again, simple anecdotal evidence invalidates that. Just because you saw it that way and handled it that way doesn't mean that everyone else did or should. Two of the most general observations I have made about alignment are that: 1) it's a huge recurring topic online but my personal experience is that it's been a VASTLY smaller issue and arguments over it are uncommon at best, and 2) any game of D&D I played WITHOUT alignment became shockingly likely to feature base and degenerate characters, and spiraled out of control quickly and fell apart when characters found they could sink no lower without the DM ending it instantly. That is to say, as a ROLEPLAYING GUIDELINE, it WORKED. Alignment doesn't define all motivations - it describes a characters actions. I hate to say this, but you're just doing it wrong. I believe the accepted notion is that drama is found simply in conflict. That conflict could be found just as easily in black/white as in shades of gray. See, I have no particular use for using D&D to explore moral questions. EVERY moral quandry presented to me in D&D by a DM for the purpose of presenting a moral quandry has been of the nature of, "Guess what _I_ want you to do and watch your character get THWAPPED when you guess incorrectly." EVERY one. That is not an exploration of morality. On the other hand I REVEL in the ability of the CLASSIC paladin to slay evil things, morally secure in the knowledge that to do so is right for no other reason than that they are evil.</blockquote>

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