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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9737064" data-attributes="member: 4937">Alignment is something that if you don't have you usually have to invent.  It need not be D&D alignment in the classic 3x3 grid, but it needs to be something that says explicitly on the character sheet, "This playing piece is meant to be more than just a pawn with a move set."  Most systems tend to do something in this regard intending to encourage that mindset using tools that the designer believes are important to the genre.  For example, VtM uses humanity, willpower, nature and demeanor as tools which are intended to - if used properly - create something other than a pawn mindset in the player.D&D's system is iconic and rich as any other and well suited to D&D's big fantasy scope with clashes of archetypal forces in the world.  It also tells us something about the character that a typical seven sentence backstory doesn't.I find that most people's problems with alignment comes from some combination of DMs using it to play the PC for them, or because they disagree with the concept of objective morality (even though this fits nicely in the alignment grid), or because they really want to play the character in pawn stance and don't like anything suggesting its anything but the highest level of play to do otherwise.  In my experience, it's almost always possible to work out from how the character wants to play the character where the character is going to fit into the grid and just say, "Ok, your idea that the ends always justify the means or that there is nothing objective about morality is a common belief system in the campaign world and it corresponds to X."  And I find it's always possible to get people to accept alignment on their character sheet by framing everything about it as reward and not punishment, the same way that say WoW reframed the penalty for playing more than 8 hours a day as a bonus to playing the first 8 hours of the day and even though it was the same thing people loved one and not the other.</blockquote>

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