I loved the system in 2nd edition, butas it now stands, doing away with it, altogether, would be the best choice. Newer players don't like the restrictions it imposesand WoTc has downplayed to downright gutted the importance of it anyway compared to past editions.
That’s because they don’t understand how it’s sposta work. They think it’s something they have to adhere to instead of something malleabile that’s sposta reflect their actions. I refer you to my previous post:
I’m thinking maybe they should.It’s very restrictive and forces your PCs into a black and white morality mold with no real shades of grey.Maybe replace it with like a Character Nature and Demeanor system like in White Wolf’s World of Darkness games.
If I may, I would like to offer a counterpoint to your premise.
Alignment shouldn’t dictate a PC’s actions, rather the inverse. A PC’s actions dictate their alignment. A player is free to play their character however they like regardless of whatever is listed in the alignment box on their character sheet, and shouldn’t feel restricted. If the alignment box lists L/G, and the player wants their character to beat up shopkeepers and steal their wares then they are free to do so. Their alignment would simply shift over time towards C/E. If they only beat up shopkeepers who cheat their customers and then give their stolen goods to the shopkeepers victims, their alignment would instead shift over time towards C/G instead. If they were to instead get the laws of the land changed to where it is legal to beat up evil shopkeepers and redistribute their I’ll-gotten wealth to their victims, then their alignment would remain L/G. You see, alignment should be mutable, and adjust to fit whatever actions the PC chooses to take, not restrict PC actions. And alignments can shift both ways, forth and back again, depending on what the PC does.
In truth, all alignment truly does is provide a codified representation of a PC’s moral code. A PC’s moral code is set by their player. If the moral code changes, the representative of that code, the PC’s alignment, should simply shift to match. Alignment in no way restricts a PC, it reflects them.
I guess I generally agree with this, but then it makes me wonder, what’s the point?
So we’ve hung a label on a character’s behavior. What does that mean? What does anyone do with the information? Outside of a few alignment-restricted magic items, what’s the value of the exercise?
As a representation of a character’s (PC or NPC) or monster’s moral code, Alignments can give an at-a-glance indication of how those various characters/monsters will likely view each other’s actions.
When a character or intelligent monster dies, it’s alignment indicates which of the outer planes it’s soul goes to, which can be important when it comes to bringing them back.
There used to be more, but much has been dropped since previous editions. For example, it used to be Paladins & Rangers would lose their class features if their alignments shifted from Good. Now, stuff like that is no longer RAW, but I’m sure some folks have houseruled those ramifications back into their home games.
OK fine, examples from the rules in which alignment matters:
None of which would actually be less functional if you deleted any explicit reference to alignment from the items. Do you really need to note "by the way, using this item makes you evil" when to use the item properly you're required to eat babies or something? The claim is not "evil doesn't exist", it's that "assigning an alignment to every creature is inappropriate for broad classes of creature and not terribly useful on individuals". Show, don't tell. You should describe the villainous deeds of your villains, not just say "yeah, he's evil, just take my word for it".
I didn't say anything about painting entire races or categories of creatures as a single alignment. In fact I said that not every orc should be evil. Neither should any other race or creature type should ALL be good or evil. I gave a specific example in which that being is evil. The alignment matches, he is bad news. There is no need for expansion or investigation or wildly detailed descriptions on why Demogorgon is evil. He just is.
Removing the alignment restrictions from some of the items would make their significance ridiculous. All of a sudden any plain jane nobody can use the Book of Exalted Deeds AND The Book of Vile Darkness? Fane-Eater in one hand and the Dawnbringer in the other? I'm loyal to my friends, somebody stole something important and I want it back, I run away when danger looms. Good to go right?
Again I never said whole races or groups should be painted with the alignment brush. Just that in some cases, some things should be Good and some things should be Evil.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
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"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Removing the alignment restrictions from some of the items would make their significance ridiculous. All of a sudden any plain jane nobody can use the Book of Exalted Deeds AND The Book of Vile Darkness? Fane-Eater in one hand and the Dawnbringer in the other? I'm loyal to my friends, somebody stole something important and I want it back, I run away when danger looms. Good to go right?
Not using alignments doesn't mean "anything goes"; in fact, it's more restrictive than using alignment, because rather than saying "This item requires you to be Good", you have to say "This item requires you to abide by the following code of behavior", instead of a wishy-washy poorly defined 'good'.
The core problem with alignment is that, if you actually give your characters personalities and motivations, it's completely useless, because it doesn't say anything that giving your characters personalities and motivations didn't already do.
All of a sudden any plain jane nobody can use the Book of Exalted Deeds AND The Book of Vile Darkness?
While doubtable that "any plain jane nobody" could use both books, it is not inconceivable that the right hero could use both the Book of Exalted Deeds and the Book of Vile Darkness simultaneously.
Fourth Edition Vecna has all the dark secrets things he is known for--evil cults dedicated to finding dark knowledge etc.... but it also introduced "good" Vecna followers. It acknowledged that, as god of secrets, folks like rebels against a tyrannical king might invoke Vecna to keep their rebellion secret. Or someone trying to hide from persecution. It even went so far as to introduce the Keepers of Forbidden Lore--a Good cult dedicated to Vecna that followed his principles of collecting forbidden dark knowledge.... to take it out of circulation and make sure it never fell into evil hands.
Such an individual, who both was worthy of the Book of Exalted Deeds in their acts.... and worthy of the Book of Vile Darkness with their devotion to its author might be contradictory from a strict application of the alignment system is pretty feasible given a certain set of 100% believable character choices.
And it's things like that which make strict application of alignment just as useless as real-world pseudoscience analogies, like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator--sapient creatures are far more complex than silly little charts can ever truly capture.
I run D&D games as part of my ministry, and I've written and performed a whole set of sermons on the subject, and even used it as part of my coursework for my ethics degree, but it basically comes down to, yes, we should ditch alignment.
I've run a campaign where alignment was utilised, and one where it wasn't. Not intentionally, but I just didn't do it the second time.
What I noticed was that the characters were played differently. There was less of a push to incorporate the lawful-chaotic axis. I also noticed a decrease I roleplaying - the decisions being made were more likely to be that of the player's desire rather than that of the character. By which I don't mean "I disagreed with the player as to what their character would do", but instead the rationales presented were a lot more linked to the player than before, whereas the first had a lot of "well, my character has had these experiences and these are her attitudes, so she's going to..."
It's an anecdote, but it does indicate to me that, in a roleplaying sense at least, there is value to the alignment system.
Bow, I do think it needs a bit of refinement, most of the arguments I see about it are down to its own contradictory statements for example, and I think it could do with being rebuilt from the ground up. Inb4 someone says it, no, it being "vague" is not a feature, it is a bug in this case. While there is value in not dictating every single detail, details contradicting each other or being muddy is definitely a bug.
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I've run a campaign where alignment was utilised, and one where it wasn't. Not intentionally, but I just didn't do it the second time.
What I noticed was that the characters were played differently. There was less of a push to incorporate the lawful-chaotic axis. I also noticed a decrease I roleplaying - the decisions being made were more likely to be that of the player's desire rather than that of the character. By which I don't mean "I disagreed with the player as to what their character would do", but instead the rationales presented were a lot more linked to the player than before, whereas the first had a lot of "well, my character has had these experiences and these are her attitudes, so she's going to..."
It's an anecdote, but it does indicate to me that, in a roleplaying sense at least, there is value to the alignment system.
Bow, I do think it needs a bit of refinement, most of the arguments I see about it are down to its own contradictory statements for example, and I think it could do with being rebuilt from the ground up. Inb4 someone says it, no, it being "vague" is not a feature, it is a bug in this case. While there is value in not dictating every single detail, details contradicting each other or being muddy is definitely a bug.
Depends on the group I guess, none of the games I've been in have ever needed the alignment chart to help people get into the RP.
As I may have mentioned before, I restrict alignment to the Outer Planes. Outside of them, it has no force and no real usefulness.
I disagree, alignments help you (as a DM) play a character and play them as they really are. Just because someone is X alignment doesn't mean they have Y and Z personality traits.
Alignment is one of many features, it is meant to be used with personality traits & ideals & bonds & and flaws. The problem is when, as I said above, people reduce certain alignments to be the whole character and play them based off that. If you are the DM and you restrict alignment usage, then it's gonna be a lot harder to know your monsters and players better. For example, if someone RP's less with their character, especially at low levels, and you dont know whether they might except a certain adventure hook like a "Save the town", or a "Steal from the museum", you can look at their alignment and personality traits, etc, to figure out how the quest would make sense to your characters.
In addition, they are important to certain mechanics (such as certain attunement requirements of some magic items).
Alignment helps you DM better and have more fun, if you don't have it in your campaign, then I think your missing out.
Note: This is just my opinion, for a some (I believe) less common groups of people, it may be beneficial to remove alignment from your campaigns.
I disagree, alignments help you (as a DM) play a character and play them as they really are. Just because someone is X alignment doesn't mean they have Y and Z personality traits.
Um... those two sentences contradict one another. The requirement to play a character properly is knowing the character's personality. If alignment doesn't indicate personality, it's worthless.
I disagree, alignments help you (as a DM) play a character and play them as they really are. Just because someone is X alignment doesn't mean they have Y and Z personality traits.
Um... those two sentences contradict one another. The requirement to play a character properly is knowing the character's personality. If alignment doesn't indicate personality, it's worthless.
Wrong “ality.” Alignment indicates “morality,” not “personality.” L/G or C/E or whatever have absolutely no bearing on whether or not someone is funny or boring, charming or abrasive, polite or rude…. An NPC’s personality is up to the DM.
I disagree, alignments help you (as a DM) play a character and play them as they really are. Just because someone is X alignment doesn't mean they have Y and Z personality traits.
Um... those two sentences contradict one another. The requirement to play a character properly is knowing the character's personality. If alignment doesn't indicate personality, it's worthless.
Wrong “ality.” Alignment indicates “morality,” not “personality.” L/G or C/E or whatever have absolutely no bearing on whether or not someone is funny or boring, charming or abrasive, polite or rude…. An NPC’s personality is up to the DM.
Morality is part of personality -- 'what does this character want' and 'what is this character willing to do to get what it wants' are personality traits, and are directly correlated with morality (the problem with alignment is that it's a many to one mapping; if you answer those two questions I'll have a pretty good idea of the creature's alignment, but if you tell me the creature's alignment I won't be able to answer those questions except in probabilistic terms).
I disagree, alignments help you (as a DM) play a character and play them as they really are. Just because someone is X alignment doesn't mean they have Y and Z personality traits.
Um... those two sentences contradict one another. The requirement to play a character properly is knowing the character's personality. If alignment doesn't indicate personality, it's worthless.
Wrong “ality.” Alignment indicates “morality,” not “personality.” L/G or C/E or whatever have absolutely no bearing on whether or not someone is funny or boring, charming or abrasive, polite or rude…. An NPC’s personality is up to the DM.
Morality is part of personality -- 'what does this character want' and 'what is this character willing to do to get what it wants' are personality traits, and are directly correlated with morality (the problem with alignment is that it's a many to one mapping; if you answer those two questions I'll have a pretty good idea of the creature's alignment, but if you tell me the creature's alignment I won't be able to answer those questions except in probabilistic terms).
If that’s your definition of “personality,” you must be a real hit at parties.
I disagree, alignments help you (as a DM) play a character and play them as they really are. Just because someone is X alignment doesn't mean they have Y and Z personality traits.
Um... those two sentences contradict one another. The requirement to play a character properly is knowing the character's personality. If alignment doesn't indicate personality, it's worthless.
Note the word "help".
I am trying to say that alignment works with other factors to help with that, they are not the sole part of your personality/morality but one important piece of it.
If that’s your definition of “personality,” you must be a real hit at parties.
A standard dictionary definition of personality is "the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character."
Exactly, the “combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s distinctive character.” Alignment is just one part of that combination, you can’t combine one thing with itself and call it a combination, and you yourself already stated that alignment by itself can only inform a DM a little bit about an NPC’s character and that in no way can it single-handedly form one single distinctive character:
I disagree, alignments help you (as a DM) play a character and play them as they really are. Just because someone is X alignment doesn't mean they have Y and Z personality traits.
Um... those two sentences contradict one another. The requirement to play a character properly is knowing the character's personality. If alignment doesn't indicate personality, it's worthless.
Wrong “ality.” Alignment indicates “morality,” not “personality.” L/G or C/E or whatever have absolutely no bearing on whether or not someone is funny or boring, charming or abrasive, polite or rude…. An NPC’s personality is up to the DM.
Morality is part of personality -- 'what does this character want' and 'what is this character willing to do to get what it wants' are personality traits, and are directly correlated with morality (the problem with alignment is that it's a many to one mapping; if you answer those two questions I'll have a pretty good idea of the creature's alignment, but if you tell me the creature's alignment I won't be able to answer those questions except in probabilistic terms).
You have in fact already conceded my point by stating that “morality is [only] part of personality.”
In a roleplaying context, that translates as "the information required to roleplay the character".
Again, you have proven my point. Alignment most certainly informs a DM regarding some fevers of how to RP a character, but the rest of it requires us to fill in those blanks. Are they funny or droll, or dull, or intriguing, or boring, or quirky, or polite, or rude, or nasty or nice, or…? I could RP a C/E character as over the top as a Disney villain, or as plane Jane as Ted Bundy. I could RP L/G as obnoxiously as the stereotype, or as personable as Prince Charming himself. (The Disney Prince Charming, not the OG rapey one.) Things like Int, Wis, and Cha also inform how someone is to be RPed, but only so far. The rest is up to (and only limited by) my imagination and talent.
Is alignment informative? Yes. Is it important in as much as that it’s D&D’s method of representing one’s moral outlook? Absolutely. Is it the be-all-and-end-all of how to RP an NPC? Certainly not.
Alignment is a Sacred Cow for D&D, and like all of D&D's Sacred Cows, it's very divisive. In this case, I think both sides are more-or-less right. It doesn't generally hurt, in the abstract, to have 'Alignment' in the game. If Wizards were froggy enough to take it out people would just put it back in anyways, and a lot of folks feel like alignment is an intrinsic and necessary part of The D&D Experience. The Internet has enshrined alignment as an inexorable part of Nerd Life; like it or not, we're stuck with it so why ruffle the feathers of folks who swear by it?
Alignment is also f#$%ing useless as a means of determining anything whatsoever about a critter's motivations, desires, fears, personality, or in fact anything meaningful about how to use/run a character/monster. It's so broad as to be mostly just noise, providing nothing in the way of real guidance, arguments about alignment can get table-ruining vicious, and it's a tool prone to wild misuse by moron DMs. Most everybody here knows that a DM saying "You can't do that, you're Lawful Good" is a DM who's also saying "I have no business being behind this screen, please take my DMing privileges away", but sadly they're still going to wreck games and sour people on the hobby.
Is bad DMing a core rulebooks problem? No, not really. Bad DMs are gonna be bad DMs no matter what the books say. But man...alignment is one of the easiest 'Bad DM' buttons a bad DM can press, isn't it? I can absolutely see why some folks might feel some kind of way about it and want that button taken away. Combined with the fact that alignment is so broad and nondescriptive as to be pointless, and yeah. I don't use it in my games, and if a DM I ended up playing with did want to use it I'd tell them to let me know what my alignment was once they'd seen me play for a month or two. The only person with any business knowing alignments is the DM.
At its core, alignment is nothing more than a seed. A kernel of a personality. Some people like to build out from alignment - they pick an alignment as a starting point and fill in from there, so without that seed they don't know where to start and they get upset. Other people build out from different seeds, be they desire/fear/moviation, quirk/ideal/bond/flaw, or something else entirely, and telling those people they need to cram alignment into the whole thing after the fact or they're No True D&D Player can make them upset. These threads will continue for the lifetime of tabletop roleplaying, and nobody will ever be convinced to move their stance.
Blugh.
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As a representation of a character’s (PC or NPC) or monster’s moral code, Alignments can give an at-a-glance indication of how those various characters/monsters will likely view each other’s actions.
When a character or intelligent monster dies, it’s alignment indicates which of the outer planes it’s soul goes to, which can be important when it comes to bringing them back.
There used to be more, but much has been dropped since previous editions. For example, it used to be Paladins & Rangers would lose their class features if their alignments shifted from Good. Now, stuff like that is no longer RAW, but I’m sure some folks have houseruled those ramifications back into their home games.
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I didn't say anything about painting entire races or categories of creatures as a single alignment. In fact I said that not every orc should be evil. Neither should any other race or creature type should ALL be good or evil. I gave a specific example in which that being is evil. The alignment matches, he is bad news. There is no need for expansion or investigation or wildly detailed descriptions on why Demogorgon is evil. He just is.
Removing the alignment restrictions from some of the items would make their significance ridiculous. All of a sudden any plain jane nobody can use the Book of Exalted Deeds AND The Book of Vile Darkness? Fane-Eater in one hand and the Dawnbringer in the other? I'm loyal to my friends, somebody stole something important and I want it back, I run away when danger looms. Good to go right?
Again I never said whole races or groups should be painted with the alignment brush. Just that in some cases, some things should be Good and some things should be Evil.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Not using alignments doesn't mean "anything goes"; in fact, it's more restrictive than using alignment, because rather than saying "This item requires you to be Good", you have to say "This item requires you to abide by the following code of behavior", instead of a wishy-washy poorly defined 'good'.
The core problem with alignment is that, if you actually give your characters personalities and motivations, it's completely useless, because it doesn't say anything that giving your characters personalities and motivations didn't already do.
While doubtable that "any plain jane nobody" could use both books, it is not inconceivable that the right hero could use both the Book of Exalted Deeds and the Book of Vile Darkness simultaneously.
Fourth Edition Vecna has all the dark secrets things he is known for--evil cults dedicated to finding dark knowledge etc.... but it also introduced "good" Vecna followers. It acknowledged that, as god of secrets, folks like rebels against a tyrannical king might invoke Vecna to keep their rebellion secret. Or someone trying to hide from persecution. It even went so far as to introduce the Keepers of Forbidden Lore--a Good cult dedicated to Vecna that followed his principles of collecting forbidden dark knowledge.... to take it out of circulation and make sure it never fell into evil hands.
Such an individual, who both was worthy of the Book of Exalted Deeds in their acts.... and worthy of the Book of Vile Darkness with their devotion to its author might be contradictory from a strict application of the alignment system is pretty feasible given a certain set of 100% believable character choices.
And it's things like that which make strict application of alignment just as useless as real-world pseudoscience analogies, like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator--sapient creatures are far more complex than silly little charts can ever truly capture.
I run D&D games as part of my ministry, and I've written and performed a whole set of sermons on the subject, and even used it as part of my coursework for my ethics degree, but it basically comes down to, yes, we should ditch alignment.
I've run a campaign where alignment was utilised, and one where it wasn't. Not intentionally, but I just didn't do it the second time.
What I noticed was that the characters were played differently. There was less of a push to incorporate the lawful-chaotic axis. I also noticed a decrease I roleplaying - the decisions being made were more likely to be that of the player's desire rather than that of the character. By which I don't mean "I disagreed with the player as to what their character would do", but instead the rationales presented were a lot more linked to the player than before, whereas the first had a lot of "well, my character has had these experiences and these are her attitudes, so she's going to..."
It's an anecdote, but it does indicate to me that, in a roleplaying sense at least, there is value to the alignment system.
Bow, I do think it needs a bit of refinement, most of the arguments I see about it are down to its own contradictory statements for example, and I think it could do with being rebuilt from the ground up. Inb4 someone says it, no, it being "vague" is not a feature, it is a bug in this case. While there is value in not dictating every single detail, details contradicting each other or being muddy is definitely a bug.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
My group has not use alignments in years.
Depends on the group I guess, none of the games I've been in have ever needed the alignment chart to help people get into the RP.
As I may have mentioned before, I restrict alignment to the Outer Planes. Outside of them, it has no force and no real usefulness.
I disagree, alignments help you (as a DM) play a character and play them as they really are. Just because someone is X alignment doesn't mean they have Y and Z personality traits.
Alignment is one of many features, it is meant to be used with personality traits & ideals & bonds & and flaws. The problem is when, as I said above, people reduce certain alignments to be the whole character and play them based off that. If you are the DM and you restrict alignment usage, then it's gonna be a lot harder to know your monsters and players better. For example, if someone RP's less with their character, especially at low levels, and you dont know whether they might except a certain adventure hook like a "Save the town", or a "Steal from the museum", you can look at their alignment and personality traits, etc, to figure out how the quest would make sense to your characters.
In addition, they are important to certain mechanics (such as certain attunement requirements of some magic items).
Alignment helps you DM better and have more fun, if you don't have it in your campaign, then I think your missing out.
Note: This is just my opinion, for a some (I believe) less common groups of people, it may be beneficial to remove alignment from your campaigns.
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HERE.Um... those two sentences contradict one another. The requirement to play a character properly is knowing the character's personality. If alignment doesn't indicate personality, it's worthless.
Wrong “ality.” Alignment indicates “morality,” not “personality.” L/G or C/E or whatever have absolutely no bearing on whether or not someone is funny or boring, charming or abrasive, polite or rude…. An NPC’s personality is up to the DM.
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Morality is part of personality -- 'what does this character want' and 'what is this character willing to do to get what it wants' are personality traits, and are directly correlated with morality (the problem with alignment is that it's a many to one mapping; if you answer those two questions I'll have a pretty good idea of the creature's alignment, but if you tell me the creature's alignment I won't be able to answer those questions except in probabilistic terms).
If that’s your definition of “personality,” you must be a real hit at parties.
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A standard dictionary definition of personality is "the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character."
In a roleplaying context, that translates as "the information required to roleplay the character".
Nope
Note the word "help".
I am trying to say that alignment works with other factors to help with that, they are not the sole part of your personality/morality but one important piece of it.
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HERE.Exactly, the “combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s distinctive character.” Alignment is just one part of that combination, you can’t combine one thing with itself and call it a combination, and you yourself already stated that alignment by itself can only inform a DM a little bit about an NPC’s character and that in no way can it single-handedly form one single distinctive character:
You have in fact already conceded my point by stating that “morality is [only] part of personality.”
Again, you have proven my point. Alignment most certainly informs a DM regarding some fevers of how to RP a character, but the rest of it requires us to fill in those blanks. Are they funny or droll, or dull, or intriguing, or boring, or quirky, or polite, or rude, or nasty or nice, or…? I could RP a C/E character as over the top as a Disney villain, or as plane Jane as Ted Bundy. I could RP L/G as obnoxiously as the stereotype, or as personable as Prince Charming himself. (The Disney Prince Charming, not the OG rapey one.) Things like Int, Wis, and Cha also inform how someone is to be RPed, but only so far. The rest is up to (and only limited by) my imagination and talent.
Is alignment informative? Yes. Is it important in as much as that it’s D&D’s method of representing one’s moral outlook? Absolutely. Is it the be-all-and-end-all of how to RP an NPC? Certainly not.
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Sigh.
Alignment is a Sacred Cow for D&D, and like all of D&D's Sacred Cows, it's very divisive. In this case, I think both sides are more-or-less right. It doesn't generally hurt, in the abstract, to have 'Alignment' in the game. If Wizards were froggy enough to take it out people would just put it back in anyways, and a lot of folks feel like alignment is an intrinsic and necessary part of The D&D Experience. The Internet has enshrined alignment as an inexorable part of Nerd Life; like it or not, we're stuck with it so why ruffle the feathers of folks who swear by it?
Alignment is also f#$%ing useless as a means of determining anything whatsoever about a critter's motivations, desires, fears, personality, or in fact anything meaningful about how to use/run a character/monster. It's so broad as to be mostly just noise, providing nothing in the way of real guidance, arguments about alignment can get table-ruining vicious, and it's a tool prone to wild misuse by moron DMs. Most everybody here knows that a DM saying "You can't do that, you're Lawful Good" is a DM who's also saying "I have no business being behind this screen, please take my DMing privileges away", but sadly they're still going to wreck games and sour people on the hobby.
Is bad DMing a core rulebooks problem? No, not really. Bad DMs are gonna be bad DMs no matter what the books say. But man...alignment is one of the easiest 'Bad DM' buttons a bad DM can press, isn't it? I can absolutely see why some folks might feel some kind of way about it and want that button taken away. Combined with the fact that alignment is so broad and nondescriptive as to be pointless, and yeah. I don't use it in my games, and if a DM I ended up playing with did want to use it I'd tell them to let me know what my alignment was once they'd seen me play for a month or two. The only person with any business knowing alignments is the DM.
At its core, alignment is nothing more than a seed. A kernel of a personality. Some people like to build out from alignment - they pick an alignment as a starting point and fill in from there, so without that seed they don't know where to start and they get upset. Other people build out from different seeds, be they desire/fear/moviation, quirk/ideal/bond/flaw, or something else entirely, and telling those people they need to cram alignment into the whole thing after the fact or they're No True D&D Player can make them upset. These threads will continue for the lifetime of tabletop roleplaying, and nobody will ever be convinced to move their stance.
Blugh.
Please do not contact or message me.