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<blockquote data-quote="jsaving" data-source="post: 4707669" data-attributes="member: 16726">Certainly in 4th edition, alignment's main and perhaps only purpose is to differentiate between Team Good and Team Evil.&nbsp; But other designers and editions at other times have talked about many other purposes, some of which make more sense than others, including:1) Providing a crutch for novice gamers who might otherwise role-play their characters as themselves2) Providing an objective description of a character's morality that is understandable by anyone in any campaign3) Providing a useful shorthand for character behavior4) Specifying sentient universal philosophical concepts that are at war with each other (e.g. Moorcock)5) Enforcing mechanical restrictions based on outlook (e.g. monks must be lawful)6) Emphasizing that Good and Evil are not the only teams out there, and that in fact different strands of Good may oppose each other just as fervently as they oppose Evil (obviously this wasn't a guiding 4e principle)So there are lots of reasons people have given for why D&amp;D needs an alignment system, besides the simplistic good-guys-versus-bad-guys setup for 4th edition.&nbsp; Which of these functions *should* be done by an alignment system would be an entirely different debate, though -- and I suspect *any* justification one could give for an alignment system would be pounced on by a fair number of people...</blockquote>

[QUOTE="jsaving, post: 4707669, member: 16726"] Certainly in 4th edition, alignment's main and perhaps only purpose is to differentiate between Team Good and Team Evil. But other designers and editions at other times have talked about many other purposes, some of which make more sense than others, including: 1) Providing a crutch for novice gamers who might otherwise role-play their characters as themselves 2) Providing an objective description of a character's morality that is understandable by anyone in any campaign 3) Providing a useful shorthand for character behavior 4) Specifying sentient universal philosophical concepts that are at war with each other (e.g. Moorcock) 5) Enforcing mechanical restrictions based on outlook (e.g. monks must be lawful) 6) Emphasizing that Good and Evil are not the only teams out there, and that in fact different strands of Good may oppose each other just as fervently as they oppose Evil (obviously this wasn't a guiding 4e principle) So there are lots of reasons people have given for why D&D needs an alignment system, besides the simplistic good-guys-versus-bad-guys setup for 4th edition. Which of these functions *should* be done by an alignment system would be an entirely different debate, though -- and I suspect *any* justification one could give for an alignment system would be pounced on by a fair number of people... [/QUOTE]

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