This is a follow up on https://skyspiral7.blogspot.com/2022/07/my-take-on-d-9-alignments.html so read that first.
By now you should be thinking about so many factors that it's hard to keep track of them and you might ask "isn't there a more simple way to accomplish the same thing?". And that is exactly what I wanted you to ask. But to answer it we first need to know: what exactly is alignment trying to accomplish? As the Cheshire cat points out in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll if you don't know where you are going then it doesn't matter which path you take.
First it's time to go back to Bob's point 1 which is that character alignment is based on player choices which can change over time. Dan agrees with this as do I. If alignment was fixed at the beginning and never changes no matter what the character/player does then that alignment would represent "the original state of mind of the character" which is useless information. Of course not all characters are static, for ones that are dynamic their alignment needs to also be dynamic.
The 3 of us agree that alignment needs a specific definition if it is to be useful because an ambiguous definition wouldn't have enough support to provide the information desired. Bob and Dan both state that alignment is important but that's something I doubt is true.
First it's important to recognize that alignment is being phased out of D&D. 1e alignment had few options (law, neutrality, chaos) and characters were expected to be lawful. 3e had the 9 options allowing character to be a wider range but certain classes had alignment requirements and characters were still expected to not be evil. There were mechanics that used alignment such as "detect evil" and "protection from good" and all monsters had alignments. In 5e characters are expected to fill in the boxes for personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws which together take the place of alignment but there's still an alignment box which is supposed to be the overall picture of those other boxes. Although you are still expected to not be evil, classes no longer restrict alignment and fewer (if any) mechanics use alignment. It seems like Wizards of the Coast recognized that personality/motivation is complex (and started allowing more and more possibilities) and that alignment wasn't doing all that it should be doing (bonds etc fix that issue). In 5e I'm not aware of any reason to actually fill out the alignment box at all (even clerics/paladins can be any alignment with any god). It seems to only exist so that the community didn't freak out because alignment was removed. After all, if alignment didn't exist how could we get into philosophical discussions like this one? There are things that alignment could do that we can do even better without alignment which is to say that we need "something like alignment".
Let me start by stating things that alignment shouldn't do. "this game feature requires that alignment" is bad for role playing: if I have a character concept that makes sense then I should be allowed to play it (even though it doesn't match the usual alignment). In D&D 3.5e monks are required to be lawful and if they stop being lawful they lose their magic kung fu (yes I know magic kung fu doesn't fit medieval European fantasy but it's in the default setting of D&D anyway). A free style martial artist hero who uses a variety of improvised moves and is chaotic is a fine character concept but isn't allowed in this edition for no apparent reason.
Another bad use of alignment is mechanics that interact with it. If a villain is not currently doing anything wrong should detect evil detect him? Is there some sort of naturally forming karma aura that is based on actions that people universally agree are good or evil or do all the gods agree on what counts as good and they watch every single person all the time and judge accordingly? Don't get me wrong moral relativism is BS (look up the trials against post WW2 Nazis) but being able to use magic to enforce morality means you have no need to get to know the person which is bad for roleplaying unless the spells weren't 100% accurate but at that point you'd be better off playing with the idea of "can a demon be good?". If you had spells for "detect demon" that would be fine because that would be telling you facts. There are plenty of ways to play with morality but "detect evil" (and alignment in general for that matter) makes that kind of impossible. If you don't want to play with morality then your villains are going to be obvious so that "detect evil" isn't useful except for surprise villains who are weirdly immune to detect evil to avoid ruining the surprise. The only good use for detect evil I can think of is if something was supposed to be obvious but the players aren't seeing it but in that case there are other clues you could drop.
Another problem is that in D&D 3.5e there's a certain curse that flips a character's alignment. While a ray that makes evil people good or good people evil is a classic trope, it brings up too many roleplaying questions. A person's entire mind is made from a combination of nature and nurture. Your inherent DNA determines some things (drugs and injury are bigger physical factors) but most of it is from your experience. Perhaps you had a childhood trauma or no one has ever treated you like an adult or whatever it is. With that in mind how would a player roleplay their character's alignment flipping? The character hasn't been changed physically and the memories are the same so how am I, as a player, supposed to understand his motivations of this alignment that doesn't fit everything else? Additionally from a gameplay perspective if this wasn't asked for and is permanent (as some of them are) then this is effectively killing the character. That character has that alignment for a reason, switching that alignment is like replacing him with a new character which the player might not like.
Alignment also encourages "my guy syndrome" which is where a player does something consistent with the character but it ruins the game. D&D etc is a game played for fun and socializing. It is better for a character to act in a way that doesn't make sense than it is to ruin the fun or start a player fight. My guy syndrome is possible with any character concept but an alignment makes some people think "what's the most lawful or chaotic thing to do" which is much more dangerous than "how would my character's oaths influence his behavior".
But alignment isn't all bad: there are some good uses for it. I'll talk about how to do these things without alignment. The first thing is "your god/society thinks you are too evil". The thought behind this is accountability for your actions. Actions having consequences is totally valid but it's easy to see that this is possible without alignment. You can keep track of some kind of reputation for people's default attitude toward the character. Likewise a god can threaten "you're straying too far from my teachings, if you don't repent I'll cut off your magic" (you may need to have a conversation with the player too). This is where my alignment definition's actual good vs viewed good comes into play. An evil person can have a good reputation because people aren't aware of everything he is doing. Having an alignment doesn't make this paragraph any easier to do (in fact it's a distraction). For example if a god has a list of rules and the cleric is being very lawful but not following those specific rules then the god can complain even though the alignment is perfectly fine. Likewise reputation isn't as simple as an alignment. Maybe someone has a reputation of being a drunkard, gambler, ladies' man, promise breaker, always late, or being easily angered. Or for something positive like for always having the most interesting stories to tell (although reputation is usually bad instead of good). Reputation can also be used to address the issue of murder hobos. Alignment doesn't cause murder hobo behavior so I won't define what that issue is (it's selfish based but any alignment can be selfish especially if it's killing "bad guys").
Another way that alignment is useful is for character creation brainstorming. Some people like to start with alignment and flesh out the character from there. This can be easily replaced with 2 brainstorming questions: "how does your guy feel about structure and order" and "how does your guy treat others". Another big one is "what motivates your guy". Of course there are tons of possible questions but these 3 are a fine starting place. Your character must have motivation of some kind. Chaotic lazy is not an acceptable character concept.
If you're running a game like D&D 3.5e the alignment restrictions can be removed easily and spells like "detect evil" can be replaced with "detect outsiders that are stereotypically evil" (demons, devils, etc). For character creation (in any game) there are plenty of questions that can be asked (too many to list but you can look up a few). And be sure to keep track of character reputation and consequences of actions taken.
And that's it. Don't stress over trying to label "good" and "lawful". For example the Joker (from DC Comics) is well organized and makes plans that he follows exactly even with backup plans and outsmarting people with traps. Yet he's also seemingly impulsive and seemingly insane and there's very few (if any) things that he won't do. Arguing whether or not he counts as lawful does nothing to help the understanding of the character nor the ability to write Joker stories (or roleplay). Edge cases like this are good examples for why labels are not helpful because character concepts and keeping track of reputation are easily done for the Joker (for extreme versions of the Joker, no one will trust him under any circumstances regardless of if you consider him lawful). There's no doubt he's evil (he enjoys the suffering of others and will take risks to make that happen) but a label that obvious is especially useless.
Another example of useless alignment labels is Kyubey: this paragraph has spoilers for Madoka★Magica. First watch the show (or first 2 movies) then the 3rd movie "Rebellion". Kyubey is obviously Lawful throughout: he's strict with his promises and rules and acts in an orderly manner. World 1 Kyubey has a goal of saving the universe therefore his motivation is good aligned however this method is "the lesser evil" which is not allowed by Christian morality but may be permitted by alignment systems (I didn't cover this in mine because it's more of an edge case and opinion). World 2 Kyubey performed an experiment of trapping someone in suffering in order to see if he could make something, that already had a solution, "better". There's really no excuse for that: it's evil. World 3 Kyubey was trying to save the universe from chaos and did nothing immoral (as of the end of Rebellion). So Kyubey goes from debatably good to definitely evil to definitely good. But this isn't character development: he is exactly the same in all 3 cases however the alignments fail to reflect that and arguing over the alignment will do nothing to help understand his complex character. You could describe him as: seeks the survival of the universe at all costs, lacks compassion, and will allow suffering for the sake of saving the universe in the "most efficient" way possible. Which I guess isn't that complicated but is more than a 9 square alignment system can handle.
That's not to say you can't have any kind of label. You can write down simple notes (like I did for Kyubey above) like: never kills, greedy, or no respect for authority. D&D 5e has a system of bonds etc and Mutants and Masterminds 3e has a system of complications. These are flexible and vague enough to prevent my guy syndrome and allow describing more complicated characters than 9 alignment squares can.
Note that despite all this I still use the phrase "stereotypical lawful good" as an easy way to start describing something because it allows me to start from common ground even though the rest of the description won't follow alignments. So stereotypes can be a useful short hand but most things don't follow them. The alignment definitions I have in my previous post is the best definitions I can come up with but they are still useless.
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