>Making players come up with motivations, personality quirks, and backstory tells you shit about their characters too without arbitrarily shunting them into a tiny little box that may in fact limit their roleplay by a significant margin.
That is only the case if you (erroneously) think that alignments prescribe your actions, rather than all of the above things you mentioned determining your alignment.
You are not good because your alignment is Good, you are Good because you act like a good guy.
Should alignments be purged from all RPGs or are they a useful thing to keep around for whatever reason?
Leo Morales
Camden Gray
Here's the thing though, even if having a type helps you with roleplay when you're first starting out, it can also create a situation where newbies never bother to dig deeper into what makes their character unique beyond going "oh, he's a [alignment][race][class]."
Then when they're playing in games that require a bit more thought as far as character detail, newbies in the dust with no idea as far as how shit's supposed to work.
Hunter Allen
I haven't seen this in 20 years of gaming save from people who didn't give a shit about roleplaying in the first place.
It's one of those "arguments" that isn't really an argument because it doesn't come up.
Nathan Rivera
>You are not good because your alignment is Good, you are Good because you act like a good guy.
Yet at the same time, you can also be punished by being unable to gain levels in your class because you acted too far out of your alignment and the DM thought it was necessarily to backhand you back into your place while also teaching newbies "if you decide on your character's alignment, you should NEVER do anything that goes beyond that alignment, lest you get punished for it in a meta-sense."
Liam Russell
>I haven't seen this in 20 years of gaming
Congrats, I've seen this happen multiple times throughout multiple campaigns though, so I suppose we're at an impasse.
Ethan Ross
And what you said applies to a fairly small selection of classes in the entire line, and aren't even the only classes that have such restrictions on them, all of which are explained well in advance. Further, you are treating the DM as some manner of malevolent opposition, which is a poor start to begin from in any regard.
It's disingenuous to treat the openly outlier classes as though they are the rule, user, if you are trying to make a coherent argument.
Anthony Baker
>I've seen this happen multiple times throughout multiple campaigns though
From players who understood what was expected when it came to roleplay, who had their beliefs both challenged and affirmed by the DM, and who actually desired to roleplay their character?
What you are saying is that you had a lot of shitty players who were satisfied putting in the bare amount of work to roleplay a caricature, trope or stereotype, not a character, and are putting the blame for poor players on alignments.
I've had players who openly asked me what they should do according to their alignment, and the answer I've given, and my DMs have all given, is that you do what your character would do, keeping in mind that you say you are a good person, and it's up to the player to act like a good person.
Be what you say you are, in all facets.
Christian Foster
>And what you said applies to a fairly small selection of classes in the entire line, and aren't even the only classes that have such restrictions on them, all of which are explained well in advance.
It also sets a poor precedent for games where characters are expected to change and grow as a result of their experiences throughout the campaign.
>Further, you are treating the DM as some manner of malevolent opposition, which is a poor start to begin from in any regard.
How so? Would it be better if we pretend that nothing bad ever happens because alignment?
Blake Brooks
>What you are saying is that you had a lot of shitty players who were satisfied putting in the bare amount of work to roleplay a caricature, trope or stereotype, not a character, and are putting the blame for poor players on alignments.
As opposed to you, who is pretending that alignments are actually a good method of fleshing out characters for newbies even though it generally teaches them bad habits that they employ throughout other fucking campaigns?
If alignment was so good then why the fuck is it that even in D&D post 3.PF, WotC took a wild step back from how alignment works in favor of creating the background system?
Samuel Green
>It also sets a poor precedent for games where characters are expected to change and grow as a result of their experiences throughout the campaign.
You can learn and grow without throwing away the core part of your personality and the ethics you hold dear, user. Change != destroying your psyche.
>How so?
Because few DMs held to the idea of the "Opposition DM" even in it's heyday, and it's an ideal that is soundly buried, only lifted up and trotted around online by people so misanthropic they need an "enemy" to hold as a strawman, as in your example.
I never saw these arguments playing Basic and 2e, they arose in 3e from people trying to game the system.
>who is pretending that alignments are actually a good method
Never said that. In fact, my post was , and I hold to it. It is a feature, not even a major feature, and means more to the DM and to the overarching campaign than anything else.
>If alignment was so good then why the fuck is it that even in D&D post 3.PF
It is, 4e just didn't base mechanics around it precisely because it led to fuck ups and stupid arguments, like this thread. It was scaled back because players were doing it wrong, then complaining it didn't work because they were doing it wrong.