Core Principle: Your Alignment System is Dumb

[TheFlatline]

It's very odd that in a thread about "Core Principles", we've quickly devolved into discussing the weirdnesses of 2nd and 3rd edition D&D religion.

There are other games out there. There are other fantasy cosmologies. Many of them work better than the nonsense that is D&D. Could we go back to discussing core principles?

D&D is the only system that really adheres to this kind of alignment system. And anything D&D uses is a "core" principle due to it being the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

But this discussion underlies Frank's basic premises. Alignment is at best fucking stupid, and at worst completely pointless. To take it seriously is to get into metaphysics that 99.9% of gamers out there just don't care about. Even in D&D the vast majority of people will either play Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral to give them the most personality options, unless they intentionally want to party-fuck by being the odd evil man out.

I know of nobody on this planet who is entirely good or entirely evil. Everyone has faults and virtues. Cramming the breadth of human endeavor into one of 9 classes is painful, limiting from a roleplaying standpoint, and arbitrary from a mechanical standpoint. In theory it's supposed to limit access to clerical magic, plus it's supposed to give you a "launch point" for your character's personality. Instead it breaks down into nonsense.

[Lokathor]

I don't care to define it. It's already been defined by others, and in an often slightly self-contradictory way.

The only issue I wished to raise with you was that your argument that "good depends on who you ask" is literally wrong within DnD-land.

Otherwise, we've just established that moral alignment in D&D is not just a mess, but absolutely fucking pointless.

Welcome to DnD, we have t-shirts over there -->

[Prak]

3) Yeah, some people are just dicks. If you're made of Good Elemental energy and you're also a dick, are you a Good god or not?

Define "good" for a mortal.

Now define "good" for a timeless, immensely powerful being who operates on another plane of existence.

If you can answer those two points, then you can start to answer your question.

I seriously doubt that "good" is identical for Joe the Peasant and Tyr. In fact, Joe the peasant, Smitts the Paladin, and Tyr the God will have 3 different codes of morality that they adhere to, complicating things. And yet they'd all be "good". Hell all three would be "lawful good" and yet probably have only barely similar moral codes.

Um, no. They'd all have the same core moral code (their priorities necessarily differ, however), but their duties are different.

Joe the Peasant's moral code is to be selfless to the extent that he helps those that are in need when he's in a position to. Raise his neighbour's barn, tend to the wounded traveler on the road, share his meagre meal with the starving man that stops at his house asking for food. His duty is to provide for those less fortunate than him and his family. If he's truely good AND we're going with the "food is scarce" model, he probably occasionally goes without food so his family can eat.

Smitts the Paladin has that same moral code, but his duties differ. Being a strong, capable adventurer blessed by his god or the forces of god, his duty is to protect and provide for the commoners and the weak. He gives to charity, he helps the sick farmer plow his fields, he goes out and slays the manticore that's killing livestock and shepherds, and he defeats the evil lich trying to subjugate the realm.

Tyr has similar duties to Smitts, but on a larger scale, and he can't be bothered to help Joe plow his fields when sick, because he's needed to hold back powerful demons and devils and hold up the tenets of truth and justice as divine concepts, *and* he has to make sure Clerics get their spells.

To take it seriously is to get into metaphysics that 99.9% of gamers out there just don't care about.

Really? Lets see here... out of the eighteen gamers I personally know in meat space(plus one online who I count as a personal friend rather than acquaintance), I know for a fact that four of them actually do quite care, not counting me. So that's just over 20% of gamers just I know. adding me it becomes 5/19, or just under 30%.

[magnuskn]

I care to the extent that I think declaring the alignment system as "dumb shit" is not even trying to take into account the "realities" of a world where real gods with fixed alignments and competing portfolios exist.

If one accepts that premise, it makes much more sense than by simply looking at it from our relativistic real world moral viewpoint. Of course if you look at it from how the real world works, it looks like a bunch of horseshit, but D&D ain't the real world.

If we can handwave that a character with 1 of 100 HP left is as combat capable as one with full HP, if we accept the D&D economy, magic system, monster-to-humanoid ratios, etc., then I think handwaving the contradictions of the alignment system should also be possible, aye?

[kzt]

One the basic flaws of the whole alignment system is that the majority people who participated in or led organizations considered "evil" by most of the world certainly didn't think of themselves as being "evil". There are any number of self-justifications they can and did use, but in general they saw themselves as somewhat heroically doing "difficult things that needed to be done". Whether that was shooting little Jewish kids in the head or bashing in the heads of little kulak's kids with shovels.

This doesn't necessarily apply to individual criminals, who sometimes do both see themselves as evil and glory in it.

[magnuskn]

One the basic flaws of the whole alignment system is that the majority people who participated in or led organizations considered "evil" by most of the world certainly didn't think of themselves as being "evil". There are any number of self-justifications they can and did use, but in general they saw themselves as somewhat heroically doing "difficult things that needed to be done". Whether that was shooting little Jewish kids in the head or bashing in the heads of little kulak's kids with shovels.

This doesn't necessarily apply to individual criminals, who sometimes do both see themselves as evil and glory in it.

Yeah, but that's again using the "real world" standard, instead of the "fantasy world with real gods" one. in Faerun, Hitler would have been a minion of Bane or Cyric, doing the extermination with the knowledge that he'd get a good place in evil afterlife for his works.

[kzt]

The ends justify the means. Every so often some whiny bitch who doesn't like to do things that are hard or gross will balk at this - but it's true. If you kill one person and save two people through your action you have in fact saved one person. Every course of actions you undertake will end with every single person dying, and depending on the actions that you take some people will die sooner or later and have more or less happiness in their lives before they go.

No, the ends have to justify the means and the means have to be acceptable in and of themselves. You can justify almost any action if you look only at what you want it to lead to in the end. Himmler's Poznan Speech is a good example of what you can justify. Who can rationally argue against taking action to stop "secret saboteurs" when you are at war?

[LR]

No, the ends have to justify the means and the means have to be acceptable in and of themselves. You can justify almost any action if you look only at what you want it to lead to in the end. Himmler's Poznan Speech is a good example of what you can justify. Who can rationally argue against taking action to stop "secret saboteurs" when you are at war?

The people who use Ends justify the Means rhetoric in those cases are actually suggesting maladaptive behavior. If you take a rational approach to achieving your Ends, then your Means will actually be justified, assuming that your Ends are not suicidal. A non-rational approach will almost always lead to unjustifiable actions and terrible things happening if people that are highly divorced from reality obtain positions of power. The Nazi belief that Jews were scum that had to be wiped away from the Earth was evil and factually wrong to the point of delusion. That doesn't excuse them of their actions, but it does show that the Holocaust had nothing to do with the Ends Justify the Means paradigm and everything to do with the fact that Nazis want to believe that Jewish people are everything that is wrong with the world in spite of the evidence to the contrary.

[Prak]

No, the ends have to justify the means and the means have to be acceptable in and of themselves. You can justify almost any action if you look only at what you want it to lead to in the end. Himmler's Poznan Speech is a good example of what you can justify. Who can rationally argue against taking action to stop "secret saboteurs" when you are at war?

The people who use Ends justify the Means rhetoric in those cases are actually suggesting maladaptive behavior. If you take a rational approach to achieving your Ends, then your Means will actually be justified, assuming that your Ends are not suicidal. A non-rational approach will almost always lead to unjustifiable actions and terrible things happening if people that are highly divorced from reality obtain positions of power. The Nazi belief that Jews were scum that had to be wiped away from the Earth was evil and factually wrong to the point of delusion. That doesn't excuse them of their actions, but it does show that the Holocaust had nothing to do with the Ends Justify the Means paradigm and everything to do with the fact that Nazis want to believe that Jewish people are everything that is wrong with the world in spite of the evidence to the contrary.

On the other hand, it's totally possible to argue the ends justify the means when the ends are something like "Stopping Hitler" and the means are something like "Send our twenty most hard core CIA agents in to kill his ass"

[Danchild]

The ends justify the means, so long as the ends are the only concern. If there is any other standard by which your actions will be judged, then it is no longer a case of the ends justifying the means. It becomes a case of my Hasidic traditions justify the means or my Jurist philosophy justifies the means. In the case of people working for an organisation, it becomes a matter of justifying your means to your boss or the courts, your own government, or a coalition of rival governments. If you don't care about any of those, and all you care about is the ends...Then do what you have to do in order to acheive those ends.

The D&D alignment system is pathetic, I agree, but I doubt the current designers can even explain the purpose of alignment as a game mechanic. In various editions there have been mechanics put in place to justify the existance of the alignment rules, but I have not seen a satisfying reason why they are a part of the game to begin with. I mean, V:tM's morality paths make no sense, but at least they have an actual effect on gameplay.

On another note, could someone explain Good to me. How about Evil. In terms that are universal and everyone can agree with.

[Endovior]

That can't be done. There's always someone out there who'll be ready to disagree. As such, instead of giving you an absolute view, I'll give you my two cents. Personally, I like to write the alignment system like this...

Good - Neutral - Evil
is really
Selfless - Selfish - Malicious

and

Lawful - Neutral - Chaotic
is really
Conformist - Pragmatic - Individualist

To clarify: a 'Selfless' person, traditionally defined as 'Good' because the gods in favor of selflessness have Good PR, is not necessarily selfless all the time, nor is the totality of his motivation completely selfless. If a Christlike figure of pure selflessness existed, he'd be somewhere off the scale around 'Exalted Good', which goes well beyond anything that's sane or reasonable. For the purposes of our definition here, what gives a person the 'Selfless' alignment is that they are primarily concerned with the welfare and benefit of others, to the point of holding the well-being of those others above their own.

A 'Selfish' person holds a more rational position, being primarily concerned with their own well-being. That's not to say that they can't help others, or be involved in other causes and organizations or whatever... but they don't so much care about being nice and helpful so much as they care about their own interests. If they're a loyal part of an organization, it's probably because they benefit directly from the organization's existence and goals. They might incidentally help others, but such is not the driving purpose of their lives. At the same time, they've got enough rational self-interest to avoid harmful and malicious actions toward others; concluding that such acts will be more detrimental to them over the long-term then any short-term gains might net them; thus steering them away from traditionally 'Evil' or 'Malicious' actions.

A 'Malicious' person has come to the opposite conclusion; that their own interests take precedence over all other concerns. They follow that principle to it's logical conclusion... which makes anyone who stands in their way an obstacle to be removed.



The other spectrum is, as always, hazier and less meaningful. I like to define it as having more to do with one's preferences towards wider society then anything else.

Conformists prefer an orderly, defined society with well-defined rules. Selfless Conformists favor such because they actually believe that that's what's best for everyone, Selfish Conformists because they find such stability safe and convenient, and Malicious Conformists because they prefer to manipulate the system to their own benefit.

Individualists feel constrained by that sort of rules, preferring to act on their own, outside such pressures. Selfless Individualists do so because they find the rules of their society inadequate to aid those in need, Selfish Individualists because they would rather live by their own code then by that of another, and Malicious Individualists because they find no meaning or value in anything beyond their own strength and ideals.

The Pragmatic don't have a strong view on societal positions. They'll work within or against societal norms as circumstances and their moral position dictates.

[kzt]

The Nazi belief that Jews were scum that had to be wiped away from the Earth was evil and factually wrong to the point of delusion. That doesn't excuse them of their actions, but it does show that the Holocaust had nothing to do with the Ends Justify the Means paradigm and everything to do with the fact that Nazis want to believe that Jewish people are everything that is wrong with the world in spite of the evidence to the contrary.

No, what I'm referring to are these paragraphs, which are classic heroic 'we had to do these horrible means because our ends were so worthwhile.'

"And none of them has seen it, has endured it. Most of you will know what it means when 100 bodies lie together, when there are 500, or when there are 1000. And to have seen this through, and -- with the exception of human weaknesses -- to have remained decent, has made us hard and is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned. "

and

"I ask of you that that which I say to you in this circle be really only heard and not ever discussed. We were faced with the question: what about the women and children? – I decided to find a clear solution to this problem too. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men - in other words, to kill them or have them killed and allow the avengers of our sons and grandsons in the form of their children to grow up. The difficult decision had to be made to have this people disappear from the earth. For the organization which had to execute this task, it was the most difficult which we had ever had."

[Crissa]

Endovior: That was a very good description of the alignments in their 2e forms. I rather liked those.

When we get to exalted versions and 'good' as an element as they did in 3e, it's kinda weird.

I always liked the version of Evil was: Just because someone or something is 'evil' doesn't mean they'd going to go around being lawless or kicking kittens. So detecting evil wasn't condemnation, it just meant tendency or what team you were playing for. Of course, it was bright enough...

Anyhow, I don't think Nazis really fit. Because they could totally be lawful good in D&D. Which is both good and horrible.

-Crissa

[Lago PARANOIA]

Dungeons and Dragons uses several completely incompatible morality standards to begin with, most notable in the fact that it uses Utilitarianism and Kantian Absolutism at the same friggin' time! Read the Book of Exalted Deeds sometime to see what I mean; that book is an absolute baloney fuckfest because it tries to reconcile these two diametrically opposed systems.

Before we talk about alignment in D&D at ALL you need to decide what kind of system you're going to use for the game. I prefer Utilitarianism, since that's the one most people are comfortable with and the one that's easiest to explain. I don't know many people who are comfortable with their heroes getting a pat on the back for acting like Conan or Kratos or Joshua, but under different moral standards that's how you're supposed to behave. So, Utilitarianism.

[Danchild]

Good - Neutral - Evil
is really
Selfless - Selfish - Malicious

and

Lawful - Neutral - Chaotic
is really
Conformist - Pragmatic - Individualist

Your model was an accurate assessment of the AD&D+ alignment model, but it fails exactly where the original does. According do this paradigm a brainwashed sucide bomber is both conformist and selfless (lawful good). A house cat that drags a small, frightened animal inside and then proceeds to torture it to death in front of it's owner is malicious (evil). If real world examples fail the transition to the system, how exactly are fantastic creatures supposed to abide by alignment? A mind flayer is a supernatural parasite that feeds on human brains. Is it evil for surviving at the expense of an inferior creature, for acting accoring to it's nature?

In Basic and Expert D&D, alignment was not that big a deal. Secret languages and a couple of options for high level fighters. That was it.

Advanced brought in class alignments. Paladins, Druids, Monks and Assassins had to act a particular way. They took a legacy rule, crammed a new axis on it, and then made some new classes that had to conform to an alignment code of some sort. I''m pretty sure that spells like protection from evil did not even specify evil alignment. Protection from summoned creatures and mind control, not the alignment itself.

2nd, and 3rd editions took the same rules and made even more efforts to make them work, to be an important part of the system. Now in 4e, they have reduced the alignment system to 5 types instead of 9, but they have not explained the need to retain alignment at all.

I personally would be happy with a trait system. Pick a personality trait for your character. Give certain characters and monsters, like a Paladin or Demon, the supernaturally good or evil trait. A rogue character can choose the sly opportunist trait. The mage the condescending know-it-all trait. Or whatever. It would provide roleplaying support instead of an outdated straitjacket IMO.

[Ferret]

The good gods thing is explainable. You just have to accept that the good gods aren't omnipotent and get their powers from having followers. Thus by serving or praying to a good god, you are increasing his power that he can use to do good things with it.

First of all you've got to ditch the idea that gods are omnipotent. They're not.

Now a good god can probably solve any given problem, but not every problem. So they naturally have to divide their resources. They also have evil gods trying to fuck shit up, so a lot of their effort is spent fixing what shit they do or just plain preventing them from doing it. Imagine a hero like superman staring at a big globe and everywhere there's a crime, there's a red dot that appears. Now imagine he's got multiple globes to watch, because there are multiple planes. In addition to that he has to worry about allocating spells to clerics under him. This guy just isn't going to get much done everywhere and a lot of injustice is still going to get by. In fact, he probably can't handle the small stuff.

Now if you're the average peasant, the one contribution that you can presumably do in a fantasy world is pray to a god and contribute your faith to increasing their power. In fact, it may well be the most important thing that you do, because lets face it, you yourself have pretty much no real individual power, but the idea that your prayers can actually become a flame strike cast by a high cleric of good somewhere is actually fairly significant.

Even if all gods of good do is maintain the spells of clerics, that's still a big fucking deal, since only clerics can resurrect people. This means that they are absolutely essential, because when your 15th level hero dies, you damn well better have a way to bring him back.

Sort of tangential to the discussion at hand, but this wasn't a thought that had occurred to me previously; this is the sort of player-character insight that'll inform probably all the clerics I play from here on out. Keen!

[Endovior]

Good - Neutral - Evil
is really
Selfless - Selfish - Malicious

and

Lawful - Neutral - Chaotic
is really
Conformist - Pragmatic - Individualist

Your model was an accurate assessment of the AD&D+ alignment model, but it fails exactly where the original does. According do this paradigm a brainwashed sucide bomber is both conformist and selfless (lawful good).

The suicide bomber is indeed a Selfless Conformist. 'Good' isn't the operative term here, anymore, and it's already been well-established that even the 'Good' people in D&D aren't very 'Good'. Selflessness is not actually a desirable trait; and it's easy to get Selfless individuals, especially Selfless Conformists, to commit atrocities... all you need is some bullshit 'greater good' rationalization, or some other sort of brainwashing. The goblin suicide bomber who blows himself up in a market to strike back against the humans has a morality indistinguishable from the human paladin that butchers the goblin women and children just because they're goblins.

A house cat that drags a small, frightened animal inside and then proceeds to torture it to death in front of it's owner is malicious (evil).

Morality is a concept of intelligent beings. It doesn't apply to creatures without human-comparable intelligence. Unintelligent animals, much like plants and oozes, lack any alignment whatsoever.

If real world examples fail the transition to the system, how exactly are fantastic creatures supposed to abide by alignment? A mind flayer is a supernatural parasite that feeds on human brains. Is it evil for surviving at the expense of an inferior creature, for acting accoring to it's nature?

Mind Flayers, like Vampires and similar supernatural beings are probably Malicious by nature, as their society and biology conspire to constantly pit them in a death struggle against all other intelligent life. That's what 'Malicious' means in this context; having no particular compunction against killing other intelligent beings if it advances your own goals. A particularly nice Vampire (say, one that takes pains to avoid draining it's victims dead) might merely be Selfish, but Mind Flayers have murder as a dietary requirement. Acting 'according to your nature' is no defense when your nature compels you to murder those around you. The zealots are right in this regard; there are some species that would be better off exterminated.

Again, note that I'm getting away from the Good/Evil dichotomy here. Being Selfless isn't necessarily a good thing, nor are the Malicious inherently bad. The two just tend to correlate, so far as human society is concerned.

[Centurion13]

Every so often a D&D author gets their Christian culture bias on and forgets that, but seriously the promise of the Great Wheel cosmology is seriously that it doesn't really matter whether the things you did were bad or good but merely whether they were well done. At least, as far as post-life rewards and punishments go. Chaotic People are judged by the gods of Chaos, Evil people are judged by the gods of Evil. And so on. If you were a bad man, the "sins" that count against you won't be the times you killed young boys, but the times you let young boys get away.

-Username17

Maybe you're onto something, Frank. Aside from missing the obvious (and I should think offsetting) corollary 'and every so often a D&D author gets their anti-Christian culture bias on...', you hit on an interesting point with which I believe CS Lewis was in personal agreement. He said that some wealthy, smart folks could give their all to accomplish some great good and it would count for no more in God's eyes than a sociopath who resisted the urge to rape and kill a little boy. It all depends on the material you start with.

Furthermore, I believe he recognized your point through something the character Aslan said in 'The Final Battle'. Something about how if the individual performed a good deed or upheld an oath for its own sake, even if done in the name of Aslan's opposite (Tash), Aslan counted it as done in his name. And that a bad deed done in Aslan's name would be properly accepted by Tash. There was no confusion about this; it was what you did that was judged, not in whose name you performed it. You couldn't fool either Aslan or Tash; no misinterpretation was possible. They knew.

Of course, this presupposes something you've been working to debunk - namely that Good is something objective thing in and of itself and not based simply on cultural preferences (though they do play a part). Pity. Good having an objective nature would explain at least in part why some authors tend to treat it as an elemental force. Evil is handled much the same - twisted Good.

Finally, I came away from Lewis with the distinct impression (carried on by many AD&D writers) that your reward in the afterlife was the afterlife, to begin with. And it wasn't a reward for the deeds you did, but the kind of person you'd become while performing those deeds. Simply put, a bad person wouldn't like Heaven (or any other fantasy afterlife resembling it).

Bad people are not necessarily bad at what they do. LLC is an example, though not necessarily the best.

But all of this comes dangerously close to me getting my Christian cultural bias on, so perhaps it's only coincidence.

Then again, maybe not. When opposites agree (CS Lewis, Frank Trollman), a wise man takes note.

Your work, as always, provokes thought and is well-researched and well-written. Thanks.

Cent13

[Danchild]

Morality is a concept of intelligent beings. It doesn't apply to creatures without human-comparable intelligence. Unintelligent animals, much like plants and oozes, lack any alignment whatsoever.

Should human morality apply to non-human intelligences though? I mean, cultural biases exist that bring definitions of morality onto conflict in the real world. In a world with fantastic creatures, a world with non-human intelligence, should should a narrow, human moral compass apply universally?

A mindless zombie is evil according to the D&D rules. A feces flinging celestial monkey is good. Both are examples of morality applying to creatures of limited or non intelligence.

A mind flayer or vampire murders sentient beings in order to survive, but these creatures are not neccesarily homocidal. By modern human standards, homocide is abhorrent, xenocide is not. If it were, all societies would be vegetarian or vegan.

Perhaps I am just building a strawman here. I have been in so many alignment debates and arguments with D&D players that I have probably lost all rational perspective on the issue. If I run another game I'll probably use the elemental alignment ideas brought up on this thread. That, or I'll abandon it entirely in favour of some houserules.

[Nachtigallerator]

Should human morality apply to non-human intelligences though? I mean, cultural biases exist that bring definitions of morality onto conflict in the real world. In a world with fantastic creatures, a world with non-human intelligence, should should a narrow, human moral compass apply universally?

A mindless zombie is evil according to the D&D rules. A feces flinging celestial monkey is good. Both are examples of morality applying to creatures of limited or non intelligence.

I don't think we need to repeat the basics of what is wrong with D&D alignments, seeing that Frank and K already did that job.

A mind flayer or vampire murders sentient beings in order to survive, but these creatures are not neccesarily homocidal. By modern human standards, homocide is abhorrent, xenocide is not. If it were, all societies would be vegetarian or vegan.

If you want to go the utilitarist route, which I'm going to follow because Kant is ancient and downright weird stuff at times, your own ends should be accomplished in a way that is more beneficial than harmful to the rest of intelligent, self-aware life. For illithids, this is technically impossible, since people are strongly opposed to giving up their brains - unless you include healing magic that regrows eaten brains. I'm not sure what the current vampire nourishment rules of standard D&D are, but constitution drain is not quite so lethal and can also be countered by magic.
Or the vampires go illithid-hunting so the rest of intelligent life backs up their activity. What about gith vampires instead of goth vampires?

On the animal issue, we (humanity) are not sure about how self-aware a fish is, and find them delicious. Concerning higher animals, we're just being retarded.

Perhaps I am just building a strawman here. I have been in so many alignment debates and arguments with D&D players that I have probably lost all rational perspective on the issue. If I run another game I'll probably use the elemental alignment ideas brought up on this thread. That, or I'll abandon it entirely in favour of some houserules.

Seems reasonable, because people's decisions seem more based on education and biologically favored behaviour than on moral philosophy either way.

[Kaelik]

Maybe you're onto something, Frank. Aside from missing the obvious (and I should think offsetting) corollary 'and every so often a D&D author gets their anti-Christian culture bias on...'

Just because you can hypothesize a corollary that might exist, doesn't mean it does, and certainly doesn't mean they offset.

If we look at who has creative control over alignment related material, like most non scientific things made in the US, you will find that the majority of those who have done so are in fact Christian. If 100% of them are Christian, then even the idea that a single one had a anti-Christian bias is retarded. And if 90% of them are Christian, the idea that the anti-Christian bias of the 10% cancels out the 90% is still ridiculous.

As for "CS Lewis agrees" facet of your post. Um.... No.

What Frank is talking about is the rules of D&D. In the rules of D&D, good people are rewarded if they are very good, and bad people are rewarded if they are very bad.

Ignoring for the moment that CS Lewis never had an opinion about 3e D&D alignment rules, that's also not his opinion about how any world actually works, because he thought that bad people were punished.

And finally, "Good having an objective nature would explain at least in part why some authors tend to treat it as an elemental force."

Stop falling prey to the philosopher's fallacy. The reason some authors treat it as an elemental force is because they believe it to be objective. This has absolutely no reflection whatsoever on whether or not it is objective.

[Crissa]

Housecats in 2e could kill player characters.

So maybe they were supposed to be evil.

-Crissa

[Blasted]

Housecats in 2e could kill player characters.

So maybe they were supposed to be evil.

That's awesome.

Do any other systems have alignment?
i.e. Although the 'Core Principle' threads seem to be focused on D&D , does it apply anywhere else?
I can't think of any non-D&D clones which use alignment.

[Prak]

off the top of my head, Palladium has alignments, and they're, if not any better, at least more explicitly codified and consistently used.

Other than that... WoD makes morality plays, or did, with the paths in Vampire and some of the shit in some other lines.

Runequest, and more specifically Glorantha, makes Chaos the big bad, but is consistent and uses Chaos to mean sentient-ish amoral entropy.

[kzt]

Glorantha has chaos and entropy as the big baddies, but the idea of good and evil is there. Chaos is generally an example of evil, though equally most evil acts are considered to be supporting chaos by most people. However many societies in Glorantha are incredibly conservative and consider new and different ways of going things evidence of chaos creeping into the world.

Alignment as D&D has done it is and always was a stupid idea if a game is for adults, it's more useful if you are gaming with 8 year olds.