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That is why I usually play only Neutral characters.
And paladin feels like playing with a straitjacket.
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I like the alignment system. For me it's always been a nice, quick shorthand to character creation. A simple task that lets players help flesh out how their characters might act and react. Usually, in game it ends up being a fun way to get a laugh as players ponder how to handle difficult options.
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If the GM uses "[your character] wouldn't do that" to keep you from playing that's a GM issue, not an Alignment issue.
I asked "Are you sure you want do that?" plenty of times (doors, levers, dropping off all their equipment to be enchanted for several days while they're being hunted by daemons, etc) but only asked "Is that something [your character] would do" once.
Newish player in the group, during the fight the player's attack kept missing and he got frustrated and the surviving NPC surrendered and he said he was gonna run him through, which prompted the question since I saw the player was pissed and it seemed OoC. He took a breath and said nah. Didn't derail the game or take up any amount of time.
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Disagreements on what good/neutral/evil are - let alone law and chaos! - are enough to make D&D's alignment system more trouble than it's worth IMO. Which has been my opinion since the mid-90's. Maybe the people you game with think enough alike that there's no problem there, but that's certainly not true of every gaming group.
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It isn't a severe enough issue, impacting enough actual players, to be something that needs to be changed.
An interesting belief, but unless you have data on that beyond your personal experiences it's nothing more.
Also, certainly, yes I game with people who think alike. Why? Because I game with people whom I enjoy hanging out with.
It's possible to disagree with someone and still enjoy their company. It may be a lost art in some quarters, true.
I would hazard curbing Power Gameing, Optimizing, and Rollplaying would be better for the gaming community than removing alignment ever will.
I suspect any mechanism to do the former would be more harmful to the gaming community than removing alignment ever could be. Edit: and no, I don't particularly like power gaming or rollplaying, and think optimisation can be taken too far. It's just that I think trying to curb those via mechanics is an awful idea.
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Alingment is tool for those who aren't willing to put in effort or have real trouble with imagination. It and any other sort of morality mechanics are the worst thing that has happened to the entire hobby in it's history.
But humans are lazy by nature so it endures. Hell as much as I loathe the entire idea and won't ever play a game that uses anything of the sort, I still use something akin to it when I GM for shorthand on personalities of minor NPCs.
This is insulting and untrue.
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RP-wise it's a shorthand for a certain set of do's and don't's.
I'd prefer a set of actual do's and don'ts. In the space that's set aside for alignment, you could have a set of questions.
Is you character brave or cowardly?Intellectual or hands on?
Introverted or extroverted?
ect
I think that would be a FAR, FAR better tool for RP than the super tiny box alignment's paragraph or 2 puts you in.
This is correct in one way: no two people will 100% agree on alignments in the game.I disagree. My group has been gaming together for around 5 years now. I also run PFS. I also run 2 additional online "home groups" I have never had an issue with alignments. Everyone seems to easily understand and grasp what the alignments are.
I've played the game since it was a tactical war game using the blackmoor rules. I've played every version of D&D except 5E. For the last 10 years, I've played games online with players from all over the world. Heck, I've even gone to D&D camp. SO I've seen my share of games, versions and players.
From my perspective, alignment has always been a problem and some kind of issue has cropped up a few times every year I've played in that time. These have ranged from disruptions of the game do to bickering all the way up to people leaving the group to table flipping and physical altercations. For me, the alignment system has never been a positive addition to the game as a PC rule IMO. It has some utility as a quick and dirty shorthand for groups/planes/cities/ect, but even then I think a better system could be used.
If you've never seen any issues that's great for you but it seems like some kind of aberration to me.
Cause people like me has to be kept "gainfully employed"?
Tradition and orthodoxy maybe?
Since Alignment is such a ingrained part of the system (and systems flavour) that it would require actual work to separat them?
Because there "might" be a possibility to remove Alignment once we get the finished product?
Requirements and limitations are fun I guess?
Since it creates creative barriers, thus make people think in skewed, strange or contradictory ways?
(Like experimenting with a puppy/kitten-kicking Iomedaean (ex-?*)Paladin turned multi-class priest of Gorum…cause that seemed fun)
* Who might/might-not still be a Paladin, as she technically advances in levels as a Paladin (thus is one? *shrugs*), while any such advancement actually gain her Cleric abilities (some of the time at least)…
Heck I just classify her as a martially inclined apostate, who's kept her "training", while learning the mystical traditions of another church.
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Alignment has served as a useful tool to help navigate roleplaying. It's simple, easy to understand, and extremely flexible.
Using it as a guideline for different monster races and cosmic forces is narratively satisfying and highly useful as a GM.
Every time I see a game that de-emphasizes or removes alignment, I roll my eyes because I'll have to be prepared for endless attempts to force my character to act in a morally grey manner, rather than simply allowing me to play a good guy (which is my preference in a fantasy game).
The battle between good and evil is a compelling fantasy, and it's the very last thing I would want changed in order to be more "realistic". Save the moral ambiguity for real life.
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My example with the Schroedinger's Paladin wasn't a commentary on whether player's should or shouldn't be able to play a Paladin without having to suffer a code of conduct or an alignment restriction. The guy I was responding to was mistakenly calling ambiguity a feature of alignment. Said ambiguity cannot be such a feature. I can have a Paladin who hasn't fallen. I can have a Paladin who has fallen. What I can't have is a Paladin who has fallen and simultaneously hasn't fallen. Never mind the appropriateness of requiring players to have a potential fall hanging over their heads, one would think we can all agree that you cannot be simultaneously fallen and not-fallen.
I mean, it's the same thing as height. I could be 5'8". I could be 6'1". I cannot be 5'8" and 6'1" at the same time.
In contrast, I can have a character that I believe to be decisive. And that same character can be believed honestly and in good faith by someone else sitting at the table to not be wishywashy, but not decisive enough to be decisive. And since the game doesn't have a Decisive-Wishywashy axis, we can both consider the character to be what we believe him to be without conflict. We can simply agree to disagree. THAT, by the way, is something allowed to be ambiguous, due to NOT having even one rule attached to it. Neither of us has to be right or validated. Neither of us has to be wrong or invalidated. No bullying, no belittlement, no disdain. No one's being put down.
The very beginning of the book tells us a load of hooey about the table being a safe space where people are supposed to be comfortable and welcomed. I wish it weren't hooey. I wish it could go without saying and when I first started playing, I naively thought it did. And maybe now it is, but only until we're talking about the character archetype devoted to being the good guy. Then there can't be enough bullying and condescension. After all, that's the whole point of the Paladin, I'm told.
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Alignment has served as a useful tool to help navigate roleplaying. It's simple, easy to understand, and extremely flexible.
Using it as a guideline for different monster races and cosmic forces is narratively satisfying and highly useful as a GM.
Every time I see a game that de-emphasizes or removes alignment, I roll my eyes because I'll have to be prepared for endless attempts to force my character to act in a morally grey manner, rather than simply allowing me to play a good guy (which is my preference in a fantasy game).
The battle between good and evil is a compelling fantasy, and it's the very last thing I would want changed in order to be more "realistic". Save the moral ambiguity for real life.
How? Literally how? How does the ability to play a character with a certain skill set/list of class features or to play a character in a world where acts of good and evil aren't codified result in the outcome you don't want? Your character can behave in the same heroic fashion you want him to; alignment existing has less than zero bearing on that.
It's like saying:
"Your Fighter is required to use a sword."
"Hurray, my Fighter can use a sword."
"Your Fighter can use any of a number of weapons, including a sword."
"Well darn, now my Fighter will never be able to use a sword."
How? Literally how? How does the ability to play a character with a certain skill set/list of class features or to play a character in a world where acts of good and evil aren't codified result in the outcome you don't want? Your character can behave in the same heroic fashion you want him to; alignment existing has less than zero bearing on that.
It's like saying:
"Your Fighter is required to use a sword."
"Hurray, my Fighter can use a sword."
"Your Fighter can use any of a number of weapons, including a sword."
"Well darn, now my Fighter will never be able to use a sword."
If I sign up to play a game with codified good or evil, I can play a good guy who doesn't feel bad about fighting evil guys.
In real life, there is no codified good or evil, so I am a pacifist.
If every conflict requires me to judge the moral character of an enemy down to their upbringing and culture, I'm going to be far less likely to enjoy such a combat heavy game.
Without alignment "I kill the evil demon!" will become "I attempt to subdue the demon so that he can be brought to trial before a jury of his peers."
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Alignment encourages roleplay.
More than a well thought out and organic background and personality? Not from my experience. In fact, alignment is often at odds with what makes sense for your character as things that make sense do not always fit naturally into the same alignment basket.
In games without alignment, people just act and behave as themselves if there were no consequences for their actions.
That's like saying that no one in real life has to deal with any consequences because real people do not have alignment tags. People react to your actions and not some abstract initial based system of artificial morality. I think one of the great failings of the alignment system is that people CAN'T "act and behave as themselves" because their own behavior and actions are far too complicated to fit any one alignment.
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If the GM uses "[your character] wouldn't do that" to keep you from playing that's a GM issue, not an Alignment issue.
I asked "Are you sure you want do that?" plenty of times (doors, levers, dropping off all their equipment to be enchanted for several days while they're being hunted by daemons, etc) but only asked "Is that something [your character] would do" once.
Newish player in the group, during the fight the player's attack kept missing and he got frustrated and the surviving NPC surrendered and he said he was gonna run him through, which prompted the question since I saw the player was pissed and it seemed OoC. He took a breath and said nah. Didn't derail the game or take up any amount of time.
My preferred question when I spot someone acting in a way which doesn't seem befitting of their character in some way is "why does your character thing doing that is an okay or desirable thing to do".
Since the primary purpose of alignment, from where I sit, is to encourage players to thing about their character's motivations and internal rationalizations for their actions, separated from those of the player (since a *player's* motivations do not change all that much from campaign to campaign.)
So I might ask "why does your character, a Paladin of Sarenrae, the goddess of mercy, mind you, think that slaughtering the bandits who surrendered is an acceptable thing to do?" and if they want to reconsider it, great, but if they can come up with an actual in character justification for something which survives some scrutiny, I am pleased that a player is thinking things through (or at least good at improv) and let it slide.
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I disagree with everything the OP says. Please keep the alignment system.
We have alignment guidelines to keep everyone from playing Hamlet.
Alignment becomes a problrm when you play so that your character fits the alignmen. But the alignmen should fit the character.
If your LG guy starts stabbing orphans and puppies, the conseqience isn't "Your character wouldn't do that" but an alignment change.
I would not like Do's and Don'ts on the character sheet as a replacement for exactly that reason. They would then dictate what your character should do or be pointless.
A lot of games that don't have alignment replace it with something else that informs what you value and care about, like allegiance to a clan or corporation or a tribe, or being born under a certain sign, or being a specific type of thing separate from "what abilities" you have, etc.
Games that don't do anything like that tend to be in settings which are very recognizeable as close to our reality- like for a Call of Cthulhu character you just have to imagine "literally any kind of person you could find on modern earth" but when we get further from our own experience (when you're vampires, or aliens, or angels, or elves, on a different planet or plane of reality or our world where the supernatural is super-conspicuous) it helps to have some other game system to give another dimension for starting to define "what you're like".
My personal preference is for "more of these systems" in a systems heavy game like Pathfinder, rather than fewer.
Alignment encourages roleplay.More than a well thought out and organic background and personality? Not from my experience. In fact, alignment is often at odds with what makes sense for your character as things that make sense do not always fit naturally into the same alignment basket.
Alignment has mechanical consequences and allows consequences if you betray it. I like that and any replacement should have that too. If there is no connection to mechanics, it is a good-practice-rule for every system (which having a good character background definitly is).
If a character would have a short list of virtues (goals important to then) and anathemas (stuff they wouldnt do) instead of alignment then spells like detect alignment should change into detect virtues and detect anathemas and so on.
With that I could live, it would even be interessting. And hey, anathemas are already in PF2 ;)