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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 7974045" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I think that [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] gave the most specific reason I’ve heard so far....in the earliest days of the hobby, a Lawful alignment made the game harder for the player. It set constraints on their characters behavior and abilities, and offset those constraints with certain beneficial effects for spells and so on. Being non-Lawful left you more free to play your character however you’d like, free of constraint, but you missed out on some of the boons. As the game has moved on, I think this has become less and less meaningful, and alignment has shifted more toward a general outlook on the part of the character, and perhaps cosmic tribalism of some sort. How this may matter in play has become far less certain or universal. Some editions seem to want to enforce alignment as a meaningful choice. In these kinds of games, alignment may affect choice of deity, it may impose certain standards of behavior, and may limit choice of character class or other game elements. But the game has moved away from those mechanical expressions of alignment in favor of a more flavor-based approach. Now it’s more a suggestion of how to roleplay than it is anything else. There’s bot even really a way for one character to discern another’s alignment, except in the case of supernatural beings.Personally, I have little use for alignment beyond it being a descriptor and geberal guideline, so i’m fine with the way things have gone. But I think that [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] had the right of it that it was really more a sign of the challenge of playing a Lawful character.I mean, look at the PCs of Gygax and Arneson and their initial players. Those characters and what I’ve read of them didn’t seem to imply a “good versus evil” style of play.</blockquote>

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