A eulogy for Alignment in CRPGs

[Hobo Elf]

Never really cared for the alignment system. It was pretty uninteresting in its implementation, even in PnP. It's one thing I won't be losing sleep over if it's gone completely.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

And it was Pathfinder: Kingmaker who was the first to actually implement story choices exclusive to different alignments.

Alignment exclusive stories are the exact opposite of how alignment is supposed to work. Outside of alignment specific magic and magical items, there shouldn't be any sort of restrictions on what a character can do due to their alignment.

 

[Ol' Willy]

I like the alignment implementation in PST. You start as a True Neutral and your alignment is shaped by your actions, working as an indicator of where you stand. From then on, your alignment gives you bonuses/penalties and additional dialogue choices. This system showed a lot of promise, but rather was underused.

 

[DraQ]

As a preliminary caveat, I'm concerned with dynamic/reactive Alignment here, not the hard prescriptive variant.

Doesn't really matter, surprisingly enough.

As a feature, Alignment added something rather special to the D&D ruleset in that it provided a tangible bridge between the narrative and mechanical aspects of a character's progression.

In a remarkably poor way no one has ever asked for.

It offered a framework that validated a PC's agency

Stop right there. You mention agency. Agency is something notoriously hard to validate, even if the party doing the validating isn't a pile of simple algorithms dumber than a bag of bricks.
And actually, even with human DM, this "framework" is an unworkable idea for the exact same reason - it replaces something human brains are naturally good at doing with pointless and unreasonably simplified mechanical framework.
It only serves to hamstring the DM, confuse the players and frustrate both as they try to get on the common page trying to pigeonhole vast variety of possible character concepts into the same place in a 3x3 matrix.
It's about as much of an improvement as trying to "clarify" communication between players and GM by forcing them to use a synthetic language consisting only of "beep", "boop" and "shitcock" instead of natural language would be.
Hey, it's a framework so it must automatically be good, rite?

at the plot level with material repercussions, be they beneficial or undesirable, and narrowed the over-flogged "ludo-narrative gap" just a bit.

Ever seen a gap that would get narrower after you forcibly wedge some shit into it?
Me neither.

Cramming artificial and limiting (abstractfag, in short) mechanics into gaps tends to broaden them as it forces player to think in terms of meta instead of in terms of what the mechanics is supposed to represent.

Instead of "what would I my guy do in this situation" you think stuff like "how much XP is each option", or, in this case, "which option did devs think as fitting the same slot I picked for my character on alignment chart?", "Am I going to be evil for asking for something to cover my risks and expenses?" or "Do I need to pick the obvious stupid option as paladin?".

Any reasonable person understands that boundaries are as important to a game as its affordances, and that "you can do anything" gets really old really fast. Reactive Alignment provided an expanded framework for a PC to have a character arc in

Quickly! You need to tell this shit to writers. They must know. Actual writers, not vidyagame ones. Imagine how much better the literature would be if authors had access to such a powerful character development tool as DnD alignment system.
By not telling them you are stalling the culture potentially for millennia.
Go, now!

where supernatural creatures might be more predisposed towards characters of a like-minded persuasion

You know what you are describing? A reputation system. Coincidentally a reputation system is an actually viable tool for handling stuff like that, unlike an alignment system.

evil could be smitten

Yes, let's clearly label good and evil so as to not confuse the typical

audience.

All in the interest of better writing and character arcs, of course.

powerful artefacts might reject an unqualified wielder

And this is an excellent, clear-cut example of alignment system hamstringing the GM/designers.
As a developer or GM you could technically create any arbitrary ethos you could attach to an item (or class, magic, religion) along with consequences for breaking it.
For example let's say you have this really powerful dagger or sword that demands weekly sacrifice of innocent blood (say, starting from the time it's first used), else it does some nasty shit to the owner (and no, throwing it way doesn't "unstick" the effect).
Will the player use it indiscriminately, get rid of it before using, try to find really shitty innocents to murder and rationalize?
Will player discover the curse before using the item?
Another example, a paladin of a specific faith might be held to a rigid honor code.
What if player's is put in a situation where this honor code is not really reconcillable with their goal (this kind of stuff is better modeled if falling isn't an all-or-nothing affair - it lets cracks accumulate slowly).
Both examples are easy to enforce on a computer too.
Compare and contrast nebulous "alignment" with it's 3x3 matrix where no two people can even agree on a single thing.

Outward easily enumerable actions are perfect basis for an unambiguous enforcement of rules. Trying to divine player's intent as expressed by ridiculously reductionist system is not.

If in my game a follower of Judoism has fighting by throwing people around while also abstaining from eating (p)orcs and wearing mixed fibres as tenets they need to observe under the pain of dire diarrhoea, then that is how the religion of Judoism works in my game and it's easy to track and enforce mechanically. It is not concerned with whether Judoism makes you a good person nor whether player's intents were noble when doing something.

holy men could fall and villains could find redemption

Whereas, as literature demonstrates, they couldn't before invention of DnD 3x3 grid. Oh, wait.
Did your parents put you to sleep by choking you down when you were little?
That shit is bad for developing brain, you know.

and all of these things weren't just waffle, they had hard, numerical consequences that went onto your character sheet.

Could you please fucking stop masturbating over basic arithmetic? Or at least do it privately? Shit's unseemly.

Anyway, putting numerical consequences somewhere player can see them is just asking for gaming the system. See wedging shit into gaps and why it widens them above for more information.

Where you want consequences is place like reputation system, ideally woven organically into the working of your world, rather than "as long as as I stab no more than two extra beggars I should be good, then I can build up my karma again by handing water to the remaining ones" (that's roleplaying for you).

Now, when you're playing around the table with this advanced, radiant AI called a DM (well, maybe not so advanced sometimes)

Not if their growing brain suffered from periods of oxygen deprivation, in any case.

there is of course room to have your experience contextualised ad hoc. Indeed, the DM could even just choose to bring Alignment back (I did), or they could simply make on-the-spot rulings as to whether your character is worthy of wielding Carsomyr or not. Basically, Decline may be mitigated by DM fiat.

Yes, a living DM may patch around even very shitty and broken mechanics - like alignment - and get it to work against all odds.

But when it comes to videogames, there is no such salvation - the DM is hardcoded, and he's not taking your questions.

Precisely. And that's why they shouldn't even try to tie mechanics to their nonexistent understanding of player's intent and character concept.

Or maybe we should get the game's AI to write convincing dialogue and engaging plots too? I'm sure it's going to go well.

And without the benefit

*snicker*

of a systemic Alignment framework to (rudimentarilly) assess your moral quandries and dish out your "just" rewards, you're left with the pressing ennui of endless possibility, where every door is just as good as the rest

No, that's what happens if you don't make your world reactive enough. It's completely independent of having two extra words on your character sheet and actually tends to work better without.
Because it's all about modelling tangible consequences of player's tangible actions instead of trying to divine their intangible intent.

and the path to choose is the one which gives you one extra goblin's worth of XP.

And that's what actually happens when you cram kludgy abstractfaggotry (like alignment system or your typical XP one) into every perceived gap.

Perhaps I'm being overly dramatic

No, just bloody fucking stupid.

but it's undeniable that there will be less character feedback to your decisions.

Proper feedback goes into in-universe interactions, not character sheet.

Ideally, if, as a cleric of specific religion, you covertly take this really sweet item from your faith's altar, you learn of your transgression when you try to summon divine power but get mark of an apostate burned into your face instead, partially blinding and disfiguring you and being potentially identifiable by the clergy. And for proper effect this kind of consequence should be partially randomized and deferred.
Putting the consequences of a transgression on a character sheet defeats the entire fucking point even if you have a good system, let alone an alignment one.

Ethical choices and consequences still exist, obviously, non-D&D games have them, but you're restricted to setpieces which need development resources to script and, of late, voice and animate - i.e. they cost money.

At this point I am pretty convinced you don't really understand much of... anything, really.
My remark about oxygen deprivation, although originally in jest, seems to ring more and more true, unfortunately.

To cut it short:

• Developing any sort of system or content obviously costs money.
• Systems are obviously better at handling organically recurring situations than content.

But if you are making a system you should actually focus on making one that is:

• Actually good
• Practically implementable

Alignment is neither as it depends on first reading player's mind and then reducing the result to one row and column of a 3x3 matrix.

So shall we get concrete? The Paladin's the blatant choice to pick on. Once the jackbooted thug of a given church, a zealot granted divine power in service to his order, he had to comply with a strict code abstractly describing him as "Lawful Good" to exercise his abilities. The definition of Lawful Good didn't really matter so much

Actually it matters a lot if it is to be enforced by a computer program. If it cannot be clearly defined, then it's meaningless.
Something abstractfags fail to understand.

How many coinpurses you need to steal before you become evil is not a proposition that should be of any interest to videogame systems designer. How many before they try to hang you in the town square OTOH is an acutely relevant one.

And we're left with a question - why? Why did Alignment have to be tossed to the wayside?

Because it's dumb, intractable, excessively limiting and gets in the way of both players, GMs and goyimdevs gamedevs alike.

Well, it's partly because hordes of Critical Role fans just couldn't put up with a DM's ruling: "But why is my Paladin getting Chaotic points for lying to the bad guys?! What do you mean I can't roll a Lawful Good soul-selling Warlock?!"

Well maybe they wouldn't if you expressed paladinness or warlockness in actually communicable terms.
But no, let's use a matrix of 9 terms no two people can actually agree on to communicate - GENIOUS!

And it's also because of a streaming parade of keyboard philosophers, plenty on this very forum, constantly decrying that a tic-tac-toe table of arbitrary moral references can't accurately describe the complexity of human psychology... The very same people who'll harp on about TB over RTwP will turn around, suddenly forget what the word "abstraction" means, and wail over how four superficial cardinal points on the Alignment chart aren't realistic. Bravo! It was never supposed to be, just how the Attack and Damage Rolls were never supposed to comprehensively model a warhammer slamming a breastplate (paging Dr. Sawyer, Dr. Sawyer to Penetration stat). They were merely meant as accessible abstractions for play, but someone's always gotta overthink shit.

You seem to have trouble understanding the purpose of abstraction and nature of a good one.
Do you need some help with it?
I mean hypothetically, because there are still cases where modern medicine is helpless and this seems to be one of them.

Alignment is a role-playing tool than never translated well to either PnP or computers.

Fixed.

 

[DraQ]

they had hard, numerical consequences that went onto your character sheet.

You think that having numbers associated with everything is a good thing, "just because".
Therefore you're a simulationist.

Deleat this.

Abstractfag cannot be a simulationist (for simulationist is a majestic, dignified creature whereas an abstractfag is base and foul) and OP is clearly an abstractfag.

Then you should concede that morality is not bound to any numbers in real life.
And so alignment is unnecessary.

suddenly forget what the word "abstraction" means

In the framework of P&P, presence of alignment is as much of an abstraction as the absence of alignment.

holy men could fall and villains could find redemption

They still can.

OP, all your arguments are essentially "it was good before and I liked it, reeeee why you change it".

 

[DraQ]

The DnD alignment system isn't so much rooted in socio-psychological factors, but in metaphysical ones - it connects the player to the greater powers of the universe, which override any kind of socio-historic forces. That is coherent, and it's what fantasy builds on since Tolkien : a mythical world where things are by definition simple.

That is actually what forever mars the face of fantasy marking it as a genre for the infantile and simpletons.

 

[DraQ]

Or people need to realize that alignment is a guide line, not a rule you sold your soul to.

That relegates it to the role of pointless wankery in cRPGs.
An improvement over broken and wrong, but not by much.

 

[DraQ]

I think the biggest issue with alignment was always people misunderstanding what the alignments were.

Also players who rigidly 100% stuck to their alignment even if it made them make choices that weren't really inline with their character, again exacerbated by not understanding the alignments correctly.

Probably doesn't help there have been overly harsh DMs in the past that force an alignment change for the merest deviation from what they feel the correct behaviour of the alignment is.

Except the computer doesn't understand what's in line with a character.
Conversely alignment is pointless and limiting with living GM.

Shitty Kitty While your nuanced view is not wrong, it's exactly that which killed alignments. The lines were blurred, and what once was novel became tedious. The basic truths that resonate with people got buried under sophistry. Western culture wants our knights holy and our monsters vile.

I want my stories to not be a death of mind.

 

[DraQ]

Ok, there situation:
"Alien race opened portal in your world in attempt to make a colony there since their world overpopulated and establishing portal taken so much energy - they had to consume the only gas giant in system. They not expected to find any sentient life and developed life at all. They cannot live in the same atmosphere as native races of your world, they will need to use atmospheric weaponry to change your world into nice, cozy, radioactive and toxic den - just like their home planet. This is the last saving grace of alien species, but it would bring sentient races and animals of your world into extinction. Your character (paladin btw) stand before device that can close portal and should make a decision. This would be last chance to make difference, because road here was dangerous (other members in party died after rockfall) and later aliens will update their security protocols, so no member of other race would use such device."
Looking forward to your explanation how paladin will be able to commit genocide of whole race without losing his powers (alignment LG btw) or even worse being damned to rot in Hell after death.

The Paladin isn't "committing genocide," he's preventing a genocide from being committed by the aliens.

The Paladin is preventing one genocide by committing another.
Alternatively he may facilitate one genocide by refusing to commit another.

The aliens are in charge of ALL the bundles of causality that are causing the problem. That the Paladin's action results in the alien race's death is entirely the consequence of their own choices and actions

They aren't if the had no way of knowing. The situation is also easily modified to not make aliens responsible for the state of their world - let's say they are about get wiped by a nearby supernova.
Even if they had a way of knowing their decision wouldn't necessarily make them evil - they would be making the same kind of decision as the paladin, essentially.
Who dies and who gets to live.

Also, aliens are probably not a single homogenoeus entity (unless hivemind). Exterminating entire species for the decision made by few is not exactly a clear cut morally good decision.

 

[Desiderius]

Eastwood’s never dark, but sometimes he’s clear.

Yeah I know. Probably TN or NG but the NE chart fit my narrative.

Oh, I definitely see it. The fun of the movie (and subsequently all his movies) is how he twists his cruelty into good.

 

[Desiderius]

Defeating nihilism, entropy, etc, surely carries significance for a living being.

That's why I said we're missing an ontological pole.

Fighting nonbeing (nihilism) is distinct from fighting chaos (entropy) is distinct from fighting evil.

 

[Desiderius]

Look, I know brain of a failed abortion like yours is incapable to comprehend anything that does not adhere to your "evul postmodernism wants to ruin muh culture reee" fairy tale, but "bright forces of good vs dark army of evul" is most boring and overused cliche ever. How old you are, 15? Because I stopped with fantasies like that long ago, when I was 14.
You know who also believe in existence of ultimate good and ultimate evil? SJW do. They also love de-humanize their opponents, just like you tried to do and they also blame all wrongs of this world on one group of people (just like you did with you culture war thing).
Whoever responsible for demolition of "abolute good and evil" concepts (your "evul" post-modernism or ((((they)))) or whatever retarded conspiracy theory you want to believe) - they do a good job, because it make fanatics like you suffer. I think it's among few good things in our dark times.

The condescension wears thin from those who purportedly believe in no height from which to judge.

As an empirical matter, you're simply mistaken.

 

[Alienman]

*Casts Protection from Moral Relativism*

I thought alignment was just the starting point of your character, like how he or she came to be, before the actual adventure. In the adventure that alignment can change depending on what you do - will you stick to your belief or will you fall to the temptation of the evil side? I find that more interesting instead of starting "tabula rasa". And how does a Paladin fall without any alignment? He can just lie through everything without any repercussions, there is nothing changing him.

 

[deuxhero]

And how does a Paladin fall without any alignment? He can just lie through everything without any repercussions, there is nothing changing him.

Paladin falling is dumb when the class is supposed to be of roughly equal power to the other classes. A code of conduct should either be a counterweight to the rest of the class being more powerful, or something every PC has to deal with (such as humanity and its equivalents in World of Darkness games, or complications in Mutants and Masterminds). Only the Paladin, who has (or is supposed to have) roughly equal power to everyone having the giant weakness nobody else has is just bad game design.

 

[Lukifell]

inb4 rpg races no longer have racials because that's racist

 

[Harthwain]

Call it a matter of perspective, but I'll reiterate that I think constraints play an important part in defining and roleplaying a solid character and having a mechanical framework helps to enforce commitment to a concept or to generate a character arc. And adjusting variables such as individual alignment definitons or penalties (e.g. falling from Lawful Good in NWN meant you could no longer progress as a Paladin, but you didn't lose your existing abilities) is preferable to tossing the whole system out.

Is it still roleplaying if you're sticking to your alignment purely for mechanical purposes?

The way you describe it make it sound more like a flaw. As in: in the process of character creation you pick disadvantages as well as advantages. Except, like deuxhero said, only specific classes have alignment-related penalites. Flaws in general make you work around your weaknesses in order to achieve your goal. However, the way it works with alignment you either don't really care for it (because there are no penalties) or strictly don't want to work around your alignment (because there are penalties). Neither helps actual roleplaying.

And if similar results can be accomplished by other features (such as C&C and reputation), then the existence of alignment as a system is questionable from this angle as well. At this point all you really need is a class, not a class + alignment. In a cRPG it's "just" a matter of implementing it.

The only way I can see alignment sort-of working is enforcing acting in-character by serving as a gateway in context of what options you can take at the moment. Shifts should happen, but the process should be gradual (sliding, rather than falling), unless we're talking about exceptional case. That way it could be its own system. Question is whether we want limitation of this kind to be in place or not in a cRPG (because it's in opposition to the concept "total freedom"). I think an argument could be made that if your own character's stats and skills act as limitators, then there is no reason to not have limitators in other areas.

 

[gurugeorge]

Ok, there situation:
"Alien race opened portal in your world in attempt to make a colony there since their world overpopulated and establishing portal taken so much energy - they had to consume the only gas giant in system. They not expected to find any sentient life and developed life at all. They cannot live in the same atmosphere as native races of your world, they will need to use atmospheric weaponry to change your world into nice, cozy, radioactive and toxic den - just like their home planet. This is the last saving grace of alien species, but it would bring sentient races and animals of your world into extinction. Your character (paladin btw) stand before device that can close portal and should make a decision. This would be last chance to make difference, because road here was dangerous (other members in party died after rockfall) and later aliens will update their security protocols, so no member of other race would use such device."
Looking forward to your explanation how paladin will be able to commit genocide of whole race without losing his powers (alignment LG btw) or even worse being damned to rot in Hell after death.

The Paladin isn't "committing genocide," he's preventing a genocide from being committed by the aliens.

The Paladin is preventing one genocide by committing another.
Alternatively he may facilitate one genocide by refusing to commit another.

The aliens are in charge of ALL the bundles of causality that are causing the problem. That the Paladin's action results in the alien race's death is entirely the consequence of their own choices and actions

They aren't if the had no way of knowing. The situation is also easily modified to not make aliens responsible for the sate of their world - let's say they are about get wiped by a nearby supernova.
Even if they had a way of knowing their decision wouldn't necessarily make them evil - they would be making the same kind of decision as the paladin, essentially.
Who dies and who gets to live.

Also, aliens are probably not a single homogenoeus entity (unless hivemind). Exterminating entire species for the decision made by few is not exactly a clear cut morally good decision.

Nope, even if they're about to get wiped out by a nearby supernova, the aliens are still in charge of all the causality leading to the situation. They created the engines that would lead to a genocide if not prevented.

Basically there's no way one can wheedle any sympathy for the aliens, they are totally at fault - and once again, to see that, just flip it around. If we, humanity, endangered another species that way for the sake of our own survival, we would be the monsters, and no moral blame could be attached to the alien paladin's action.

 

[DraQ]

That's why I said we're missing an ontological pole.

Fighting nonbeing (nihilism) is distinct from fighting chaos (entropy) is distinct from fighting evil.

Don't know about ontological pole but I do have a ten foot one.

 

[Sykar]

And it was Pathfinder: Kingmaker who was the first to actually implement story choices exclusive to different alignments.

Alignment exclusive stories are the exact opposite of how alignment is supposed to work. Outside of alignment specific magic and magical items, there shouldn't be any sort of restrictions on what a character can do due to their alignment.

The problem is that coding sophisticated consequences for doing something very diametrically opposed to what your character did so far is difficult. Simple exclusion saves time and resources and it is not like you miss out a lot.

 

[DraQ]

5E allowing paladins of any alignment is an absolutely terrible decision made by people with zero understanding of what a paladin actually is.
Somewhere along the line the understanding of what a paladin is was lost(insert ultima joke.) In fact, they've got it completely backwards which is how we've gotten into this mess.

They aren't simply clerics with another name, and they don't even necessarily have to follow a single or specific deity. Paladins are champions of order and good, any special powers or anything else they have simply follow from this -- this is where they've got it backwards in modern games.

I think the best fix (within the confines of shitty alignment system) would be to have requirements for Paladins to be lawful.
Law-Chaos axis is less ambiguous and less problem-prone than good-evil one. It makes for more interesting development and gameplay when you don't have a clear mechanical indicator of being on the path. At the very least it gives you opportunity to have fallen paladins who don't realize that they have fallen (of course that would require either less clear cut theology or specials stemming from conviction rather than being cleric-lite).
Replacing good-evil axis with a selfish-selfless one would also *slightly* unfuck alignment system.
Of course doing away with alignment and going for specific ethos where applicable plus reputation would be better still.

And how does a Paladin fall without any alignment? He can just lie through everything without any repercussions, there is nothing changing him.

Read my

s ITT.
Specific ethos based system would be superior for paladins, clerics, and the like.

In general cleric shouldn't really be a class (even in a stupid class based system, I mean). It should be a template applied to an existing character (possibly with restrictions regarding what character it can be, but not necessarily stat-wise). In exchange for following restrictive code of conduct you get access to divine powers.

 

[DraQ]

Nope, even if they're about to get wiped out by a nearby supernova, the aliens are still in charge of all the causality leading to the situation. They created the engines that would lead to a genocide if not prevented.

Basically there's no way one can wheedle any sympathy for the aliens, they are totally at fault

Nope.
First things first - there is no such thing as monolithic aliens* or monolithic humanity for that matter.
What we have is individuals (paladin, alien decision makers), singularly** making decision affecting a large number of non-participating parties - specifically selecting one bunch of those parties to be sacrificed so that the remaining bunch may live, rather than sacrificing others so that selves may live.

*)

Unless aliens are (an actual, unlike, say, a colony of ants) hivemind. But at this point they could argue for moral high ground for different reason - if an individual alien is roughly on human level but aliens are a hivemind, then the alien race is a being of much higher complexity than any human can hope to be. Much more long lived too. So the situation is roughly analogous to wiping a colony of mice to save life of a human.

**)

Even if aliens are direct democracy and are race of philosopher-scientist citizens all actually capable of understanding the ramifications of their decision in full***) each of aliens is making this decision with regards to all the remaining ones separately, and only then the individual decisions are combined into consensus.

***)

Which actually would make sacrificing humanity a no-brainer because humans are a species of abhorrent dumbfucks generally speaking.

Second, sacrificing someone else's life for your own is, other things equal, morally neutral. In either case two lives enter, one life leaves.
Sacrificing your own life is selfless act, but it's generally going an extra mile, and might even be worse option from the outside POV if other things are not being equal. You can build fun little game theory dilemmas around that too.
The possibly morally wrong part is fighting over the decision rather than finding a way to agree who should be sacrificed but that's basically because of a chance of mutual kill and finding consensus is often not a realistic option (it's basically a classic prisoner dilemma).

Third, the aliens didn't sacrifice humanity when setting things in motion. They have taken risk of potentially wiping another species - possibly a negligible one to avert certainly wiping their own.

Imagine you're driving a car. When passing a trailer loaded with heavy rolls of cable you notice that the load is starting to roll of the trailer and is going to crush you if you take no action.
You swerve onto an empty sidewalk to avoid getting crushed.
At this moment an old geezer steps out of grocery store right in front of your car - you hit him, killing him.

Are you a monster for swerving out of the way of certain death in a way that almost certainly (without the benefit of hindsight) didn't endanger anyone?

Basically this, along with the original one is a "shit happens" scenario. If you close the portal effectively genociding the aliens, the only valid motivation is us VS them, without any pretense of morality (either way).

and once again, to see that, just flip it around. If we, humanity, endangered another species that way for the sake of our own survival, we would be the monsters, and no moral blame could be attached to the alien paladin's action.

We have and more than once, for lesser reasons. Genocide when?

The problem is that coding sophisticated consequences for doing something very diametrically opposed to what your character did so far is difficult. Simple exclusion saves time and resources and it is not like you miss out a lot.

Simple exclusion of alignment system would be even better.

 

[DraQ]

True, but if you lose benefits of being a paladin for not having a very specific alingment, then you have no business being a paladin in the first place. So you either stick to it, forever, or pick a different class. To me a paladin being forced - by circumstances - to find loopholes in order to do the right thing is much more interesting concept than a straightforward, classic paladin. The latter is more suited to be an NPC material rather than someone a player should be playing as (unless his sole purpose is to be pain in the ass).

If I were to make a conventional D&D game with D&D alignment and permitting paladin as playable class I would have made it so that as a result of deferred random roll player might face a choice somewhere down the road between fall and permadeath.
So you could make a paladin but would face a significant risk of not being able to keep that paladin at some point.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Which actually would make sacrificing humanity a no-brainer because humans are a species of abhorrent dumbfucks generally speaking.

Look, I am all on on board of removing alignments, but myself I not enough sociopath to call my whole species as stupid just because we not align with your unreasonably standards (aliens which you described too "ideal" to be real, I am would say "mary sue" of alien races)
Just saying.

 

[Gargaune]

What the hell is OP talking about? The alignment system has been put to any usage in a handful of RPGs thus far - Planescape: Torment; Neverwinter Nights (both), Icewind Dale II, Pillars of Eternity (both) and Pathfinder (both). And it was Pathfinder: Kingmaker who was the first to actually implement story choices exclusive to different alignments. If anything, the idea itself is undergoing a Renaissance.

What do you mean what am I talking about? WotC has gutted Alignment in 5E, to the point it's a purely flavour stat on the character sheet, and it looks like in BG3 it'll be gone altogether. That's not Larian's fault, by the way, in the first reveal Swen answered an audience member that they'd originally planned a comprehensive Alignment implementation, but WotC told them to "tone it down", which apparently translated to mashing Shift + Del. The other games you mention are either old themselves (PST, NWN, IWD) or based on old rulesets (Pathfinder's "3.75E"), only Pillars of Balance makes your case.

Quickly! You need to tell this shit to writers. They must know. Actual writers, not vidyagame ones. Imagine how much better the literature would be if authors had access to such a powerful character development tool as DnD alignment system.

I can get that people might be confused between CRPGs and TTRPGs in this thread, but bringing literature into it just downright stupid.

It's about as much of an improvement as trying to "clarify" communication between players and GM by forcing them to use a synthetic language consisting only of "beep", "boop" and "shitcock"

We seem to be managing it on the Codex, shitcock.

Outward easily enumerable actions are perfect basis for an unambiguous enforcement of rules. Trying to divine player's intent as expressed by ridiculously reductionist system is not.

Blah blah, personal creativity, blah blah, refer back to the closing paragraph in the opening post. I stopped reading halfway down the page, learn to form a coherent block of text and come back then. Or, even better, don't.

Is it still roleplaying if you're sticking to your alignment purely for mechanical purposes?

The way you describe it make it sound more like a flaw. As in: in the process of character creation you pick disadvantages as well as advantages. Except, like deuxhero said, only specific classes have alignment-related penalites. Flaws in general make you work around your weaknesses in order to achieve your goal. However, the way it works with alignment you either don't really care for it (because there are no penalties) or strictly don't want to work around your alignment (because there are penalties). Neither helps actual roleplaying.

You are correct, the varying imposition of Alignment restrictions does result in a lack of balance between classes. A Paladin is certainly more demanding to play than a Fighter, or even a Cleric, on account of the One Step Rule. For my part, I'm not that bothered, I think it has some value in making classes feel distinct and authentic. If a player finds the Lawful Good style repugnant, maybe they're better off playing something other than a Paladin, or they can embrace the fall as part of a character arc and commit to the relative loss of power from a suboptimal multiclass, but I understand your concern.

And if similar results can be accomplished by other features (such as C&C and reputation), then the existence of alignment as a system is questionable from this angle as well. At this point all you really need is a class, not a class + alignment. In a cRPG it's "just" a matter of implementing it.

If you meant Reputation as in Baldur's Gate, that's just a streamlined form of Alignment from an external perspective, and it works okay. If you mean Faction Reputation, that doesn't fit the bill. Is a Paladin of Tyr more beholden to the values of the Temple of Lathander or the Flaming Fist? Without a central point to aggregate and generalise behaviour, it becomes unworkable due to the sheer breadth of the D&D system and fiction. Naturally, setpiece-based C&C is "the best", but it's cost-prohibitive.

The only way I can see alignment sort-of working is enforcing acting in-character by serving as a gateway in context of what options you can take at the moment. Shifts should happen, but the process should be gradual (sliding, rather than falling), unless we're talking about exceptional case. That way it could be its own system. Question is whether we want limitation of this kind to be in place or not in a cRPG (because it's in opposition to the concept "total freedom"). I think an argument could be made that if your own character's stats and skills act as limitators, then there is no reason to not have limitators in other areas.

I completely agree, but don't most CRPGs with dynamic Alignment work in gradual shifts already? The only games I can recall that offered dramatic, on-the-spot conversions were KoTOR and BG2 in their respective final acts. The way I view it, you are free to act in accordance to how you see your character, but you may come to suffer consequences even as far as a relative loss of power. At the end of the day, it's not that different to playing a melee class in Swordflight and neglecting to take Blind Fight.

 

[DraQ]

Which actually would make sacrificing humanity a no-brainer because humans are a species of abhorrent dumbfucks generally speaking.

Look, I am all on on board of removing alignments, but myself i not enough sociopath to call my whole species as stupid just because we not align with your unreasonably standards

Give it a few years.

(aliens which you described too "ideal" to be real, I am would say "mary sue" of alien races)
Just saying.

I was specifically constructing an extreme example to get as close as possible to that monolithic aliens entity and show how it still doesn't work like this.