On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, Airgedok wrote:



> alignment as a concept is childish.



Agreed.



> Lawful and chaotic are foolish concepts.



The problem is not so much that they are foolish as that they are

presented overly simplistically. Certainly the idea that some people have

a much greater fondness for societal rules than other people do is

unarguable. The trouble with D&D alignment is not that such preferences

aren`t real, it`s that they`re nowhere near as rigid or forceful or easy

to interpret and detect as the rules would claim. The set of nine

descriptions, if viewed only metaphorically and illustratively as

exaggerated myths about certain kinds of fuzzy, permeable categories of

personal preferences, is not really that bad as an introductory

descriptive theory of personality. The real problem is that they are all

written with such mindless rigidity that all nine descriptions of how such

a person would act could be accurate only for idiots and the insane. (As

an aside, given that the traditional hack and slash D&D campaign is best

described as "sneak around in the homes of strangers, kill them and take

their belongings", I can`t see how any standard adventuring party isn`t

really acting Chaotic Evil most of the time. :)



> The point being that alignemt is a early through back from 1st

> generation games that should have been dropped from 3e. People dont

> follow alignment codes of conduct and dont act in such manners.



I agree it should never have existed in any way as a rules construct. As

a kind of shorthand roleplaying aid, it can be useful for beginners or DMs

without enough time to flesh out every cameo NPC. It should certainly not

in any way have spells or magic items or suchlike which depend upon it as

part of the rules.



> Psycology laughs at such definitions used to explaign human actions.

> We are far more complex that 9 different alignments.



Yes and no. =) Psychological personality theory is a hobby of mine, and

current research describes people eerily well with four or five binary

variables for which we have pretty good experimental evidence. For

roleplaying shorthand, I like to assign MBTI types to my (N)PCs. =)



> In almost every experienced adult group I`ve talked to they all seem

> to agree that alignment and alignment restiictions and spell dont work

> and are childish gaming aids for newbie players. That are not even

> used by most other roleplaying games.



I certainly agree with this assessment. They may begin as training

wheels, and can remain useful as such when limited to the proper

circumstances and when taken with a sufficiently large grain of salt, but

taken literally they do indeed become a very uncomfortable straitjacket.





Ryan Caveney