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<blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 8600376" data-attributes="member: 6877472">Things were much simpler in the original game.&nbsp; You had Lawful and Chaotic, based on the works of Michael Moorcock.&nbsp; Good and evil were irrelevant, the forces of Chaos wanted to tear everything apart, and only the forces of Law stood against them.&nbsp; It was a war for the ultimate survival of reality.&nbsp; There was no question of if Orcs were good or evil- by definition, they were minions of Chaos.&nbsp; You killed them out of self-preservation.The change to alignment in AD&amp;D added a lot of nuance, but the game didn't support it well (if at all).&nbsp; You were still expected to go out and murder goblinoids and monsters by the truckload, but now moral questions about &quot;aren't the goblins just trying to survive&quot; and &quot;is a baby drow evil?&quot; come up to complicate the proceedings.Do we give quarter?&nbsp; Do we let prisoners go?&nbsp; Should we donate some of our gold to that orphanage?&nbsp; This made the game better as a roleplaying experience (mostly- you still had sessions grind to a halt over moral debates that the Thief would solve by going back and murdering your prisoners when they could), but worse at dungeon crawling where you break into people's homes and private property routinely, murder them, and take their stuff, and get to be called &quot;heroes&quot;.And despite some half-hearted attempts, the game has never really reconciled this issue.&nbsp; Now we're told that no species is inherently evil, and so at any point, the DM can be like &quot;actually, those hobgoblins are lawful good, you can't murder them, it's wrong&quot;.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="James Gasik, post: 8600376, member: 6877472"] Things were much simpler in the original game. You had Lawful and Chaotic, based on the works of Michael Moorcock. Good and evil were irrelevant, the forces of Chaos wanted to tear everything apart, and only the forces of Law stood against them. It was a war for the ultimate survival of reality. There was no question of if Orcs were good or evil- by definition, they were minions of Chaos. You killed them out of self-preservation. The change to alignment in AD&D added a lot of nuance, but the game didn't support it well (if at all). You were still expected to go out and murder goblinoids and monsters by the truckload, but now moral questions about "aren't the goblins just trying to survive" and "is a baby drow evil?" come up to complicate the proceedings. Do we give quarter? Do we let prisoners go? Should we donate some of our gold to that orphanage? This made the game better as a [B]roleplaying experience[/B] (mostly- you still had sessions grind to a halt over moral debates that the Thief would solve by going back and murdering your prisoners when they could), but worse at [B]dungeon crawling[/B] where you break into people's homes and private property routinely, murder them, and take their stuff, and get to be called "heroes". And despite some half-hearted attempts, the game has never really reconciled this issue. Now we're told that no species is inherently evil, and so at any point, the DM can be like "actually, those hobgoblins are lawful good, you can't murder them, it's wrong". [/QUOTE]

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