Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 5362013" data-attributes="member: 19675">So many good posts for me to agree with...For me, alignment was...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Not a straitjacket but a guide, unless you happened to be a Paladin or similar class, and in those cases, the alignment restrictions generally made sense. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Something that gave the game a feel for things we see in film or read in literature (especially the literature that formed the library of reading sources for the game's original designers): people who sense the presence of evil; people whom evil cannot touch or even face directly; evil so palpable that even the dullest of senses scream at its approach.  And in doing so, it gave everyone a lever to exert force against: the brandishing of a symbol or performing a ritual that caused beings of a certain ethos to behave in a particular way...or cease behaving in a certain way. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Something that set D&D apart from nearly every other FRPG, contributing to its unique charm.  Sure, there are games that don't use alignment that have holy men turning demons, but to me, those PCs always felt flat; the why and how of such power seemed...unexamined.  Don't get me wrong- I loved some of those games, but I always felt that D&D handled it better.</li> </ul>Like many, the only time I ever saw alignment crop up as an issue- as in, a problem big enough to cause any real argument- was when some players tried to do things that their PCs really shouldn't/wouldn't do; things radically at odds with the expressed PC concept or the way the PC had been played up to that point.Such as a guy who wanted his Paladin to torture a prisoner who had surrendered to him.  The DM told him he could do so at the cost of losing his status as a Paladin, becoming forever after a Fighter.  For some reason, the player thought this unfair.  Then he tried to convince another player to have her PC do the torture, to which the DM responded with the same ruling, and the player thought this was even more unfair.(The DM in question was a medieval studies major, the player one of his HS drinking buddies...)</blockquote>

Verification