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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Malmuria" data-source="post: 8286791" data-attributes="member: 7030755">This actually seems like kind of an edge case?  If your players are interacting with an NPC in a social encounter, the context of the situation would be more likely to drive the improv for DMs.  If they are an important NPC, you should already have some sense of their motivation and methods.  If they are a random guard or shopkeep, the context of what the players are trying to do and how they are acting would guide how the NPC reacts.  In a more antagonistic context (e.g. a dungeon), a tool like a reaction table would be more useful than alignment.You're just adding an extra step, which is counterproductive if you are concerned with using alignment to make a snap decision.  You already have "the context of the encounter and the setting." But you're going to look at the stat block, see "chaotic evil," and then decide on the fly why this particular gnoll is not chaotic evil but some other alignment, assign that new alignment to the gnoll, and then interpret how the gnoll would react based on that and the context and situation.  On the other hand, removing alignment from the stat block does not solve the problem they are ostensibly trying to solve.  The first two sentences of the 5e <a href="https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/gnoll" target="_blank">gnoll description</a> read, "Gnolls are feral, hyena-headed humanoids that attack without warning, slaughtering their victims and devouring their flesh. Gnolls are feral humanoids that attack settlements along the frontiers and borderlands of civilization without warning, slaughtering their victims and devouring their flesh."  On the one hand, it takes 5 seconds to read those two sentences and they convey the general vibe of the gnoll about as efficiently as the "chaotic evil" in the statblock.  However, even this short description implies much about the default dnd setting.  We know that there is a CIVILIZATION and Gnolls--all Gnolls--are not part of this Civilization.  They are humanoid, like elves and halflings and humans, but in a "feral" way, seen by the fact that they devour the flesh of their victims, a connotation of cannibalism.  And this civilization has settlements along its "frontiers" and "borderlands."  So we know this Civilization is expanding via its <a href="https://blogofholding.com/?p=7182" target="_blank">settlements</a>, and the Gnolls are a threat to this expansion, and its implied that the PCs are part of the former and will be contending with the feral-ness of the latter, whether or not they are officially "chaotic evil."  It's a settler colonial fantasy.This isn't about Ravenloft anymore obviously, my apologies.  But I think the whole discussion around alignment it shows the problems that WOTC is going to have in trying to change the game, and the risk they they will end up satisfying no one.</blockquote>

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