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From: reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: Alignment
Message-ID: <5298@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 9-May-85 03:55:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.5298
Posted: Thu May  9 03:55:29 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 12-May-85 01:28:58 EDT
References: <1139@cbosgd.UUCP>
Reply-To: reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (Peter Reiher)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 46

Personally, I've never liked alignments a la AD&D at all.  A far better way
to give the players standards of behavior different from their real life ones
is to use religions a la Runequest.   By this I mean that no one has an
alignment.  Rather, everyone, or almost everyone, belongs to some religion or
other.  This is "enforced" on the players by making membership in a religion
a social expectation (no atheists in the dungeons) and by providing positive
benefits for being a member of a religion.  (Clerics might only perform healing
and resurrection on coreligionists, or members of friendly religions.)  Along
with the benefits go obligations.  Each god has certain interests and standards,
and worshipers are expected to advance those interests and live up to those
standards.

Some might argue that alignment is a useful shorthand for determining the
principles of a religion.  If one has little interest in role playing and
just wants to get on with the battles and loot, this is a reasonable argument.
Roleplayers are likely to find the alignment system too sketchy to serve by
itself, so they will have to do more work, anyway.  All the mechanism attached
to alignments just gets in the way.

Even if one doesn't like heavy involvement of religions in their campaigns, 
alignments (as specified in D&D) are not a good idea.  I much prefer to let
a player's actions have their natural effects, rather than zapping them with
fairly arbitrary punishments for stepping out of alignment bounds.  If a
player goes about indiscriminently killing things, what are other people going
to think?  Probably that he's a menace which should be stopped.  Thieves who
are caught are likely to be punished heavily.  If they're not caught, but
they develop a reputation, they may get into less formal trouble when someone
with few scruples finds something missing and jumps to possibly incorrect
conclusions.  On the other hand, someone who always lends a helping hand and
is the first to volunteer to help clean out the nest of orcs despoiling the
local villages will make friends and can expect a little assistance in his
time of need.

Maybe it's personal prejudice.  Basically, I view alignments as being a
very restrictive feature.  They bind you into a certain type of fantasy world
with a very particular set of rules.  I don't like that kind of world much
myself, and I resent TSR's implication that this is the only kind of world
to play in.  (Yeah, I know that I'm free to do whatever I want, etc., etc.,
but Gygax & Co. have been selling this approach for all it's worth and 
increasingly passing it off as holy writ.  There are a lot of gamers out there
who can't seem to picture a game without the crutch of alignments to prop them
up, which is a pity.)
-- 
        			Peter Reiher
        			reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
        			{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher