It’s possible for a campaign to echo the old D&D cartoon, of course, and to have Dungeon Master as a character in the place of the gods. If that campaign uses alignments, it will be that “Dungeon Master” who judges the characters’ actions.

Aside from that ridiculous (IMO) example, a campaign world may not have gods at all, or the powers of that world might be so remote as to render quaint the provisions of the alignment rules. The surgical removal of those rules by the game master is a rather obvious choice in such a case.

A game master who wants to keep his deities mysterious even when they show up in person might choose to ignore alignment dicta, if only to keep players from trying to rules-lawyer such powerful NPCs.

The old alignment languages were perhaps the most ludicrous (again, IMO) manifestation of alignment as a tangible thing. I can imagine settings in which characters live, eat and breathe the divine presence, and can agree that such sily rules might have a place in such a game (Planescape variants come to mind).

Alignment doesn’t strike me as a bad idea, but it is tied to a specific class of settings. Fortunately, it is easily ignored or replaced, depending upon the campaign world.

My other recent thought on this is that ANY personality rules, rules that try and describe how PCs act and think are a problem (even a few of the geases in RuneQuest are a problem in this aspect). I have seen just as bad abuses of psychological disadvantages in Hero system as alighment in D&D. The problem is that as soon as you assign fixed rules to this, they either cramp flexibility (when most real world people are flexible – going back to are things black and white, and is killing black – if killing truly is absolute black, then all of modern society falls apart – because I see no way to establish a stable society without killing at least a few people), or they provide the “I was just playing my character by the rules ” (the rules told the player he HAD to destroy the fun of the rest of the players – bull pucky!) excuses.

Time and time again, I have seen players abuse personality rules. In theory, social contract should solve the problem, but in practice it doesn’t. Some dick comes along and bends the social contract and personality rules all to hell, and runs roughshod over the game. Take those personality rules away, and my experience has been pretty universal in seeing the problem never show up. Oh, and toss in the “dwarves and elves hate each other” from the early D&D days into the same personality rules bucket.

Now at a certain level, where the personality rules aren’t central to the game, or are well grounded in a general system of allegiances and alliances that are campaign appropriate (for example, it’s ok in RuneQuest for elves and dwarves to hate each other – I don’t allow PC dwarves, they’re just too weird, and several people hate trolls, which is ok, trolls can be cool, but they can serve quite well as raw enemies, and no one likes undead and chaos).

Frank

A GM seeking arbitrary restrictions on character behavior can abuse these rules in obvious ways, but in-game, how is it rationalized? Are the gods sitting in judgment of the PCs? Do their pacts with dark powers have actual consequences? These strike me as good things to do with alignments, challenges that players can overcome with smart roleplaying.

It’s not as simple as “alignments suck.” Alignments are simply not appropriate to every campaign or gaming group. D&D alignments assume the default setting of Greyhawk, or similar settings that players of the system might not use.

I can build 40 lawful neutral characters and they aren’t completely identical. They may still adhere to the essence of lawful neutrality, but from there they can establish the code that the follow, and why it is they think it’s important to adhere to it. Other characters who are chaotic believe in flexibility, case-by-case study. They may have ways of dealing with blurry situations or those situations may cause them to punt.

The nice thing about alignment is it lets me build characters that are more unlike me than if I didn’t have it.

I also should add that it’s just one of many basepoints I begin personality development with.

My only complaint is the tie-ins with “Protection against Evil” etc. These are legacy applications of folk tales about being able to protect yourself from all manner of foul beast with garlic or magic or whatever. It’s a bit antiquated

It’s hard for modern folk to believe in such nonsense, but it’s a fantasy game.

I find the Humanity/Path/Wisdom/Angst system in current and previous incarnations of the World of Darkness heavy and restrictive in a way that D&D alignment can’t hope to be. While there is a certain realistic feel to a moral system that uses a scale, it’s far too wound up into the rest of the system to be a good fit.

In Vampire, for instance, Humanity (Morality) is a scale that measures not only where you fall on a line that seems to measure a range from something like Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil, it also affects your ability to make rational decisions, affects how you can sleep, puts a cap on how social you can be, etc. In other words, WoD Morality isn’t only a straightjacket, it’s deliberately designed to be one.

The virtue of alignment is its simplicity and adaptability. Alignment works because its up to the game master and players to collectively decide what it means to be good or chaotic. Except in a couple corner cases like DR 5/Good and Silver, alignment doesn’t do a lot to force particular behaviors from players. There’s a very wide range between the lawful good paladin who would hunt a vampire across the continent and die before being dishonest and the lawful good baker who tells customers up front that his bread is a day old and gives a silver piece a week to his neighbor for the care of a sick child.

This, in my view, is superior to a system that threatens you with insanity and power loss for shoplifting (see World of Darkness).

Humanoid
Human
Medium sized
Fighter
Warrior (they dropped this one in 3rd edition. remember when the fighter, paladin, ranger, and barbarian were part of the warrior group, the thief bard and assassin were part of the rogue group, etc…?)
Prime

There’s also a list of things that Fred’s NOT:
subtyped
cursed, poisoned, whatever…

All of these are tags that show how Fred interacts with various other entities within his world.

He’s humanoid, so he can be effected by charm person, hold person, and any other effect that effects humanoids.

He’s human, so he’s effected by that ring of human control, and that sleep spell, but he can’t use the Axe of dwarven kings

He’s medium sized, so he takes up a 5′x5′ square and has a 5′ reach. He can use medium or smaller weapons in one hand, large weapons in two hands, and time was, he would take a different amount of damage from different weapons.

He’s a fighter, so he can get weapon specialization and use the rod of lordly might as a weapon (or whatever that thing is)

He’s a warrior, so he can use all martial weapons and once upon a time got greater strength and con bonuses. and gets a certain BAB.

He’s Prime, so we know how spells like banish effect him.

He’s not subtyped. That means things that have special effect on undead or fire or oozes, etc.. DON’T have a special effect on Fred.

He’s not currently under effect of curses or poisons or whatever. He COULD be, but he isn’t.

Mechanically, all Fred is is a few numbers and then a shitload of tags. Those tags help make everything easier because when someone or something interacts with Fred, we know what happens.

So what’s the big deal? Why are we bitching, because in addition to the hundreds of other tags that Fred carries around, he also carries arround:

Lawful
Good

So that if Fred get hit with a chaotic energy mace, we know how it effects him, or if Fred kisses the book of holy might, we know if he gets buffed or severe burns.

You might say “Well, THOSE tags, tell Fred how to play his character in ADDITION to telling us how he interacts with the world around him!”

We guess what Kreskin? So does every other one of em! If you don’t believe me, pay close attention to your players sometime and see how they play their mages and their halflings. See any similarities? Mages don’t generally hit people with two-handed swords? The halflings are annoying klemptomanical pains in the ass? Well damn! Quick! Let’s form an anti-class protest and an anti-race sit-in! Those class and race tags are telling players how to play their characters! We can’t have that!

Sure. Sure. Not all mages play the same. Not all halflings play the same, but neither do all lawfuls of all evils.

It’s easy to blame inter-party conflict on alignment too isn’t it? Take a closer look and you might see that there are players who play Evil characters in the middle of groups of good characters and there isn’t problem one. Why is that? Maybe because inter-party conflict has NOTHING to do with alignment. What it DOES have to do with is players wanting to cause trouble and finding an excuse to do it.

Anyway, work’s out, I’m off! Have fun everyone!

Even then, until a new generation or two of gamers take root, it’s part of the culture for a lot of folks.

Systemically as a magic thing, or as a DR issue, I have no problem with alignment. As a guideline to character behavior, and often depicted as an inflexible one at that, you end up sabotaging the baseline party concept.

In fact, I mentioned to a friend that you’d have less problems if the divisions were based on something more abstract- like elements, which do not necessarily indicate instant hostility or unwavering opposed beliefs- Fire & Water may be “against” each other, but it doesn’t mean the PCs need be.

I think it’s bad, if for no other reason than no two people can agree on it. I mean, Regdar’s, over at the Wizards.com boards, speciifally disallows alignment threads. There was a petition on the “What’s a DM to Do?” board to stop them altogether. It’s crazy!

T