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From: baldwin@cornell.UUCP (Michael S. Baldwin)
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Alignment
Message-ID: <1572@cornell.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-May-85 20:52:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: cornell.1572
Posted: Tue May  7 20:52:38 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 10-May-85 21:44:22 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept.
Lines: 33

*** REPLACE THIS LION WITH YOUR MASSAGE ***

I will control myself, and not flame anybody including Gygax about alignment,
but I truly believe that is one of the most limiting aspects of the AD&D
system.  I think that it was designed to force people who were used to
wargames to develop something resembling a personality, but once one
achieves any real experience with role-playing, I prefer to chuck to whole
system out the window (at least in regards to PC's).  I think that any well
developed character will have a complete set of morals and will not need
the crutch of a specific alignment (hmm, what do I do now, well I'm CG
so I have to...).  I suspect that most characters will fit into a certain
spectrum of the alignment scale, and will not switch from sadistic mass
murder to saint overnight, but I think that characters like people have
more depth than the alignment system offers.  It forces characters into
a two-dimensional mold which really is unneccessary.  certainly, clerics
and paladins and the like will have strict religiously based morality that
will be limiting on them, but I think that the other character classes 
should be less limited.  Asassins, for instance, have to be evil because
the taking of life for money is evil(player's handbook's rational) and
yet I suspect that most PC Asassins have never done a `job'.  Also,
Why should someone be penalized a level of experience for changing alignments?
why the artificial limitations on a characters possible actions?  I
think that if a otherwise good person flies into a rage one day and
kills a peasant or two that is acceptable if it is within the character
of the PC to do so.  We are role-playing imperfect beings who feel
the whole range of human emotions, I find running saints to be very
boring and tedious.  In the campaign I'm in now, no one has a defined
alignment, and we run into no problem whatsoever.  I agree that for
mor beginning players that it is helpful, but if you've got a group of
experienced players, try not defining yourself according to a limiting
group of 9 possibilities and see what happens, you'll probably realize
you don't need them and certainly don't miss them