I'm still confused how you are "supposed" to run alignments in D&D.
For one-off creatures: lawful = able to reasoned with, good = non-hostile (or not... depending on your character)
Personally, I treat evil as "self-serving with a pronounced disregard for others", neutral as "self-serving", and good as "selfless"; lawful as predictable and reasonable, i don't use neutral, chaotic as unpredictable and unreasonable. This isn't perfect, though.
I lightly handle alignement as a tendency marker and Indicator of broad moral concept rather than a strict code of conduct guideline that dictate action all the time. Most chaotic creatures can be loyal and follow the law just as much as lawful ones can break it or betray and most evil creatures can kill or be merciful as good ones. I stay away from "you must/can't do this because you're [insert alignment]" as much as possible.
For some creatures like undead, celestials and fiends alignement may a little more rooted in and thus heavy handed.
I'm still confused how you are "supposed" to run alignments in D&D.
For one-off creatures: lawful = able to reasoned with, good = non-hostile (or not... depending on your character)
Personally, I treat evil as "self-serving with a pronounced disregard for others", neutral as "self-serving", and good as "selfless"; lawful as predictable and reasonable, i don't use neutral, chaotic as unpredictable and unreasonable. This isn't perfect, though.
How do you guys handle alignment?
Personally I don't bother with Alignment other than a very rough sense of a characters morals at the start of a campaign, I never refer to it again, characters evolve and grow and change based on situation and what is going on in that moment.
For how you are describing things I would say by ignoring Neutral you have created a very very black and white world, which is fine, things are either good or bad. But I would argue, evil things can be reasoned with and negotiated with to end a conflict and good things might find what the party are doing so against how they feel that they will stop it regardless. In my games the world is far more shades of grey. The Orc Tribe attacking the human village, the Orcs seem evil to the Villagers, but, the Village has been built on sacred land and the Orcs did not realise this until their pilgrimage which happens every few years. Now to the Orcs the Village is evil because it has despoiled important land that must be kept free for their "god" to walk. The Village being there means now that their "god" will never again walk this land. There might be ways of resolving this either way. The Orcs are not the only ones who will pilgrimage here and this village may suffer stronger and stronger attacks leading to outright Orc Human war. The Village is only a few years old, possibly it can be moved (The Orcs will help) and peaceful trading relationships may take place between the 2.
By ignoring strict alignment rules, you have created a dynamic shifting and changing encounter or even a campaign with opportunities for different approaches. When I ran this for one of my parties they took the view that it was simple, the village needed to go because they where the "bad guys". Conflict was avoided and the Village abandoned.
Lawful/Chaotic means whether they have rigid principles that follow or not. If a rule is inconvenient and stands in your way, should you follow it? Kind of a do the ends justify the means, or do the means justify the ends question. Lawful will say that how you do it, by sticking to principles and doing things properly, the means why which you do things, is what is important - and whatever ends come are justified. Chaotic will say that what happens in the end is what is important, how you get there is justified because all's well that ends well. This a spectrum, so neutral just marks somewhere in the middle.
Good/Evil is more problematic because of how complex the real world is and, crucially, it's a gestalt measure of multiple features that while correlated, don't necessarily track with each other 100%. It's also a matter of perspective; one person's saviour is another's butcher.
For a one-shot though, I'd describe it as good being altruistic and evil being self aggrandising without valuing virtue, while neutral is balanced. A good person will do a good deed out of the goodness of their heart. A neutral person will do it out if they stand benefit - but will still honour the deal. And evil person will do whatever suits them without regard for virtue.
For example: A villager has been robbed of a gold statue worth 500gp by bandits. They offer a reward of 100gp (their life savings) for its return. A good person will go, defeat the bandits and return the statue out of the goodness of their hearts - the money is a nice bonus. A neutral person will weigh up whether fighting all those bandits is worth 100gp. An evil person will go get the statue then sell it on because he makes more money that way. Or take it back for the reward and then steal it later to sell. Or will create a fake. Etc.
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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.
For teaching new players, I try to get away from the words Good /Evil and Lawful / Chaotic. The concepts of alignment are fine, but I feel like the words trip people up because they have such different connotations than how they're described in the PHB.
I replace the words Good / Evil with Selfless and Self-centered, since that's what we usually think of as being good or evil. I have a hard time conceiving of evil without going into mass murderer territory. I can understand someone who is self-centered, though. The only difficulty is in those who are self-centered for their group. A kobold may sacrifice himself for his tribe, but if he sees everyone outside his tribe as inferior and worthy of death, then he's still self-centered.
Lawful and Chaotic, I replace with Order and Freedom. Lawful tends to be interpreted as legalistic or following the letter of the law, but open to creative loopholes. Instead, I prefer to describe someone as devoted to order in all things, which includes following written and unwritten laws. Chaos sounds too much like rAnDoM cooky behavior, but if you read the description in the PHB, it's more of someone who values freedom over rule-following. I like the Order - Freedom scale because it's easy to relate to; it's a debate that's ongoing in our society and has been for centuries.
For DMing more experienced players, I let them use alignment in whatever way works for them, up to and including not using it at all. Alignment policing - a player telling another player “you cannot do that, it goes against your alignment” or some similarly inane comment - is absolutely not allowed at my tables, and, if it came up, I would ask that player to stop. If they continue alignment policing, they are out of my game - that kind of player is both making everyone else miserable and all but certain to be causing other problems, so better to just remove them.
For new players struggling during character creation, I will use it as a set of questions to help them come up with aspects of their character. “More often than not, do you want to play someone who is good, evil, or somewhere in between?” “More often than not, do you want to play someone who is lawful, chaotic, or somewhere in between?” Based on their answers, I can either help them with what they are stuck on - be it giving them advice on races/classes where the abilities might line up with what they want to do, or just coming up with backstory and personality.
For players struggling to keep a cohesive roleplay on their character and who see their lack of cohesion as a problem, I will use it as an aid to help them maintain cohesion. “Thus far, your character has been mostly X/Y. More often than not, your character has been inclined toward X/Y, and, if given a situation, will respond in an X/Y manner.” The critical part here is putting emphasis on “more often than not”—that they can use alignment if they do not know how to roleplay a decision, but they are welcome to go off their alignment anytime they feel it is in character to do so.
For NPCs and monsters, I do not even bother to look at the racial alignments and either use other details about them or the individual NPC’s character and situation to determine how they act.
For when I am a player, I use it as a curiosity and way to create my characters. I rather enjoy asking “what is an alignment trope, and how does one turn it on its head?” when I build a character. For example, making good characters who worship evil deities or translating one trope from an alignment to “how would that trope look if it were applied in a different alignment?” Then I don’t really give much heed to alignment for the rest of the game - beyond using it for conceptualisation of something that does not follow established tropes, I do not personally find it all that useful to my roleplaying.
TL;DR: There are countless ways to use alignment - whatever way is helpful to an individual player is the correct way to use it; whatever way weaponises alignment or tries to impose one individual’s persecution of alignment on someone else is the wrong way.
But its a general guideline not a strict law. Like others have said situations drive actions, but alignment could be used to help you stay on the good/evil path. A single action is not a problem but continued actions against your listed alignment could influence how your chosen god views you and how specific magic items work with you.
Not everyone uses gods and or religion in their games but I do and they demand a specific lifestyle. I find they are a good way for the DM to toss in mission hooks. I have found I have to remind evil characters to stay evil more often that I remind good characters to stay good.
If the character wants they can change alignment one step at a time. The characters know this before the game starts so if they find they do not like who they created they can change no real problem. It adds to the story in the end, it becomes part of their story.
You do not have to use alignment at all for characters. Its still used for monsters in general.
As a GM, I ignore alignment to the best of my ability, which is pretty easy to do since there are very few things that make alignment mechanically relevant. If it pops up, I would just handwave it away.
Probably best if that thread stays dead. With a new thread here, hopefully things do not get too emotionally charged.
Worth also noting that this thread is very, very different than the linked one - this is a new user (ten posts at time of posting) who is asking what others do so they can look at different interpretations and decide what they might want to use; it is not a discussion about alignment itself nor does it invite such discussion.
I'm still confused how you are "supposed" to run alignments in D&D.
For one-off creatures: lawful = able to reasoned with, good = non-hostile (or not... depending on your character)
Personally, I treat evil as "self-serving with a pronounced disregard for others", neutral as "self-serving", and good as "selfless"; lawful as predictable and reasonable, i don't use neutral, chaotic as unpredictable and unreasonable. This isn't perfect, though.
How do you guys handle alignment?
As everyone else has said already, mostly we don't.
Any two-axis system is too simple to usefully describe all behaviors, and probably to even contain all of them. D&D's is particularly poorly-defined and open to interpretation. Good-evil is very open to interpretation, because everybody thinks their ideals are "good", and lawful-chaotic is just a mess.
Having said that, I think your lawful-chaotic interpretation isn't the best. By your definition, many dragons, even canonically good ones, can't be reasoned with. I think "able to be reasoned with" ought to be more a function of intelligence than alignment. For one-off encounters, by the general lawful-chaotic interpretation most people lean toward, I think it would be more an indicator of "willingness to sell out their larger group for self-interest". (The captured lawful enemy scout won't tell you about the ambush. The chaotic one will if they think you'll let them go safely.)
The actual meaning of each alignment is widely disputed, which is one reason we advise not using it to start with. This is particularly a problem with the law/chaos axis, though the definition of neutral on the good/evil axis is also pretty inconsistently managed.
I don't really use it much to be honest. Alignment doesn't really factor into any of my games as a player or DM. I let players pick their alignment and am happy to let them do so if they find it useful, but I don't really have any use for it personally.
Each of the alignments does have a definition in the PHB, it doesn't just define both axis and then leave you to it. So that is there as a guideline for all nine boxes. In practice though it seems that alignment tends to get used inconsistently in practice from what I hear when it IS used. I regard it as an optional character building checkbox for players to mark off and leave it at that .
Honestly, it's both enlightening and frustrating to see many of the same names from the last thread completely one-eighty in this one, pivot from "alignment is an absolute non-negotiable complete and utter requirement and necessity in every single game for every single creature from the highest gods down to the squirrels the DM mentioned offhand while describing a park" to "oh, yeah nah, I don't bother with alignment in my own games and I haven't for a while really".
Enlightening indeed.
To the original poster: in my ~4 years of running and playing 5e, alignment has never once come up. Even when we all bothered with recording it, nobody reported it, and to the best of my knowledge nobody at my table has ever said to themselves "what would an X-ish Y character do in this situation?". My table and myself see the system as an antiquated vestige of older designs with no real place nor any real need for a place in most modern games. To what extent we would use it at all, alignment would be solely for the DM to determine given that it has no impact at all save the impact the DM tells us it does. Many people like to lean on it for extraplanar 'Great Wheel' games, but honestly if you don't know what "Great Wheel" refers to, you can pretty safely skip it for now until you've got a more comfortable grip on the system.
I mostly only focus on the L/C axis of alignment, and mostly only use it as a shorthand guide to indicate how various creatures will likely react to each other. Alignment can be a useful shorthand for a DM, but it shouldn’t be some binding monolithic rule or anything. And PC alignments can (and should) change based on their actions in-game.
I don't think there's one way someone is "supposed" to do it. What's best, probably, is making it part of the Session 0 talk and making sure that everyone in your group is in agreement of how (or if) it will be used. In my current group, I don't think any of us have any idea what other people wrote down on their sheet, nor do we really care. As long as a person plays a character's personality consistently, with room for evolution as the story progresses, that's what really matters. And I'd bet that no one actually bothers to take the time to go in and change what it says on their sheet as their character evolves.
And if you are going to use it, it may also be valuable to come up with a definition for each alignment that everyone generally agrees on. This is probably the harder part. If there's one thing you can learn from these alignment threads, it's that pretty much no two people agree on what "chaotic good" or any of the other alignments means. Pick any well-realized fictional character, and there will be people who can make very good, convincing arguments rooted in the text for multiple alignments which describe that character's actions.
Honestly, it's both enlightening and frustrating to see many of the same names from the last thread completely one-eighty in this one, pivot from "alignment is an absolute non-negotiable complete and utter requirement and necessity in every single game for every single creature from the highest gods down to the squirrels the DM mentioned offhand while describing a park" to "oh, yeah nah, I don't bother with alignment in my own games and I haven't for a while really".
Enlightening indeed.
Or there was just a lot more nuance to what they were saying than you were willing to grant. Which is the problem with a lot of these discussions - there's a ton of nuance, and you can't communicate it all without writing an essay or three.
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.
As a DM I use it like Passive Perception. Apart from specifically linear “evil” or “good” magic items, it only really comes into play in the background for subtle things - hard to explain, but maybe how a bouncer/guard in a tavern might behave towards a Player Character based on body language
as a PC I use it to background my character but I tend to really immerse myself in them
The only time alignment mattered mechanically in my campaign was when it came to very specific monster abilities (like rakshasa damage vulnerabilities, for example), spell effects (like Glyph of Warding triggers) and magic items that had different effects based on character alignment. I ignore monster alignments written in stat blocks with as much frequency as I ignore monster HP and flavor text/lore - which is to say if it doesn't suit my and my players' needs, it gets adjusted.
So to answer OP's question, you're "supposed" to run alignments like you run any other rule at your table: however you think is best for your group and your play style.
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I'm still confused how you are "supposed" to run alignments in D&D.
For one-off creatures: lawful = able to reasoned with, good = non-hostile (or not... depending on your character)
Personally, I treat evil as "self-serving with a pronounced disregard for others", neutral as "self-serving", and good as "selfless"; lawful as predictable and reasonable, i don't use neutral, chaotic as unpredictable and unreasonable. This isn't perfect, though.
How do you guys handle alignment?
Most people just don't use alignment in any way. It's an oversimplification and not really helpful in most cases.
I lightly handle alignement as a tendency marker and Indicator of broad moral concept rather than a strict code of conduct guideline that dictate action all the time. Most chaotic creatures can be loyal and follow the law just as much as lawful ones can break it or betray and most evil creatures can kill or be merciful as good ones. I stay away from "you must/can't do this because you're [insert alignment]" as much as possible.
For some creatures like undead, celestials and fiends alignement may a little more rooted in and thus heavy handed.
Personally I don't bother with Alignment other than a very rough sense of a characters morals at the start of a campaign, I never refer to it again, characters evolve and grow and change based on situation and what is going on in that moment.
For how you are describing things I would say by ignoring Neutral you have created a very very black and white world, which is fine, things are either good or bad. But I would argue, evil things can be reasoned with and negotiated with to end a conflict and good things might find what the party are doing so against how they feel that they will stop it regardless. In my games the world is far more shades of grey. The Orc Tribe attacking the human village, the Orcs seem evil to the Villagers, but, the Village has been built on sacred land and the Orcs did not realise this until their pilgrimage which happens every few years. Now to the Orcs the Village is evil because it has despoiled important land that must be kept free for their "god" to walk. The Village being there means now that their "god" will never again walk this land. There might be ways of resolving this either way. The Orcs are not the only ones who will pilgrimage here and this village may suffer stronger and stronger attacks leading to outright Orc Human war. The Village is only a few years old, possibly it can be moved (The Orcs will help) and peaceful trading relationships may take place between the 2.
By ignoring strict alignment rules, you have created a dynamic shifting and changing encounter or even a campaign with opportunities for different approaches. When I ran this for one of my parties they took the view that it was simple, the village needed to go because they where the "bad guys". Conflict was avoided and the Village abandoned.
For me:
Lawful/Chaotic means whether they have rigid principles that follow or not. If a rule is inconvenient and stands in your way, should you follow it? Kind of a do the ends justify the means, or do the means justify the ends question. Lawful will say that how you do it, by sticking to principles and doing things properly, the means why which you do things, is what is important - and whatever ends come are justified. Chaotic will say that what happens in the end is what is important, how you get there is justified because all's well that ends well. This a spectrum, so neutral just marks somewhere in the middle.
Good/Evil is more problematic because of how complex the real world is and, crucially, it's a gestalt measure of multiple features that while correlated, don't necessarily track with each other 100%. It's also a matter of perspective; one person's saviour is another's butcher.
For a one-shot though, I'd describe it as good being altruistic and evil being self aggrandising without valuing virtue, while neutral is balanced. A good person will do a good deed out of the goodness of their heart. A neutral person will do it out if they stand benefit - but will still honour the deal. And evil person will do whatever suits them without regard for virtue.
For example: A villager has been robbed of a gold statue worth 500gp by bandits. They offer a reward of 100gp (their life savings) for its return. A good person will go, defeat the bandits and return the statue out of the goodness of their hearts - the money is a nice bonus. A neutral person will weigh up whether fighting all those bandits is worth 100gp. An evil person will go get the statue then sell it on because he makes more money that way. Or take it back for the reward and then steal it later to sell. Or will create a fake. Etc.
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.
For teaching new players, I try to get away from the words Good /Evil and Lawful / Chaotic. The concepts of alignment are fine, but I feel like the words trip people up because they have such different connotations than how they're described in the PHB.
I replace the words Good / Evil with Selfless and Self-centered, since that's what we usually think of as being good or evil. I have a hard time conceiving of evil without going into mass murderer territory. I can understand someone who is self-centered, though. The only difficulty is in those who are self-centered for their group. A kobold may sacrifice himself for his tribe, but if he sees everyone outside his tribe as inferior and worthy of death, then he's still self-centered.
Lawful and Chaotic, I replace with Order and Freedom. Lawful tends to be interpreted as legalistic or following the letter of the law, but open to creative loopholes. Instead, I prefer to describe someone as devoted to order in all things, which includes following written and unwritten laws. Chaos sounds too much like rAnDoM cooky behavior, but if you read the description in the PHB, it's more of someone who values freedom over rule-following. I like the Order - Freedom scale because it's easy to relate to; it's a debate that's ongoing in our society and has been for centuries.
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For DMing more experienced players, I let them use alignment in whatever way works for them, up to and including not using it at all. Alignment policing - a player telling another player “you cannot do that, it goes against your alignment” or some similarly inane comment - is absolutely not allowed at my tables, and, if it came up, I would ask that player to stop. If they continue alignment policing, they are out of my game - that kind of player is both making everyone else miserable and all but certain to be causing other problems, so better to just remove them.
For new players struggling during character creation, I will use it as a set of questions to help them come up with aspects of their character. “More often than not, do you want to play someone who is good, evil, or somewhere in between?” “More often than not, do you want to play someone who is lawful, chaotic, or somewhere in between?” Based on their answers, I can either help them with what they are stuck on - be it giving them advice on races/classes where the abilities might line up with what they want to do, or just coming up with backstory and personality.
For players struggling to keep a cohesive roleplay on their character and who see their lack of cohesion as a problem, I will use it as an aid to help them maintain cohesion. “Thus far, your character has been mostly X/Y. More often than not, your character has been inclined toward X/Y, and, if given a situation, will respond in an X/Y manner.” The critical part here is putting emphasis on “more often than not”—that they can use alignment if they do not know how to roleplay a decision, but they are welcome to go off their alignment anytime they feel it is in character to do so.
For NPCs and monsters, I do not even bother to look at the racial alignments and either use other details about them or the individual NPC’s character and situation to determine how they act.
For when I am a player, I use it as a curiosity and way to create my characters. I rather enjoy asking “what is an alignment trope, and how does one turn it on its head?” when I build a character. For example, making good characters who worship evil deities or translating one trope from an alignment to “how would that trope look if it were applied in a different alignment?” Then I don’t really give much heed to alignment for the rest of the game - beyond using it for conceptualisation of something that does not follow established tropes, I do not personally find it all that useful to my roleplaying.
TL;DR: There are countless ways to use alignment - whatever way is helpful to an individual player is the correct way to use it; whatever way weaponises alignment or tries to impose one individual’s persecution of alignment on someone else is the wrong way.
I use it.
But its a general guideline not a strict law. Like others have said situations drive actions, but alignment could be used to help you stay on the good/evil path. A single action is not a problem but continued actions against your listed alignment could influence how your chosen god views you and how specific magic items work with you.
Not everyone uses gods and or religion in their games but I do and they demand a specific lifestyle. I find they are a good way for the DM to toss in mission hooks. I have found I have to remind evil characters to stay evil more often that I remind good characters to stay good.
If the character wants they can change alignment one step at a time. The characters know this before the game starts so if they find they do not like who they created they can change no real problem. It adds to the story in the end, it becomes part of their story.
You do not have to use alignment at all for characters. Its still used for monsters in general.
Didn't we literally JUST HAVE one of these?
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As a GM, I ignore alignment to the best of my ability, which is pretty easy to do since there are very few things that make alignment mechanically relevant. If it pops up, I would just handwave it away.
Probably best if that thread stays dead. With a new thread here, hopefully things do not get too emotionally charged.
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Worth also noting that this thread is very, very different than the linked one - this is a new user (ten posts at time of posting) who is asking what others do so they can look at different interpretations and decide what they might want to use; it is not a discussion about alignment itself nor does it invite such discussion.
As everyone else has said already, mostly we don't.
Any two-axis system is too simple to usefully describe all behaviors, and probably to even contain all of them. D&D's is particularly poorly-defined and open to interpretation. Good-evil is very open to interpretation, because everybody thinks their ideals are "good", and lawful-chaotic is just a mess.
Having said that, I think your lawful-chaotic interpretation isn't the best. By your definition, many dragons, even canonically good ones, can't be reasoned with. I think "able to be reasoned with" ought to be more a function of intelligence than alignment. For one-off encounters, by the general lawful-chaotic interpretation most people lean toward, I think it would be more an indicator of "willingness to sell out their larger group for self-interest". (The captured lawful enemy scout won't tell you about the ambush. The chaotic one will if they think you'll let them go safely.)
The actual meaning of each alignment is widely disputed, which is one reason we advise not using it to start with. This is particularly a problem with the law/chaos axis, though the definition of neutral on the good/evil axis is also pretty inconsistently managed.
I don't really use it much to be honest. Alignment doesn't really factor into any of my games as a player or DM. I let players pick their alignment and am happy to let them do so if they find it useful, but I don't really have any use for it personally.
Each of the alignments does have a definition in the PHB, it doesn't just define both axis and then leave you to it. So that is there as a guideline for all nine boxes. In practice though it seems that alignment tends to get used inconsistently in practice from what I hear when it IS used. I regard it as an optional character building checkbox for players to mark off and leave it at that .
Heh.
Honestly, it's both enlightening and frustrating to see many of the same names from the last thread completely one-eighty in this one, pivot from "alignment is an absolute non-negotiable complete and utter requirement and necessity in every single game for every single creature from the highest gods down to the squirrels the DM mentioned offhand while describing a park" to "oh, yeah nah, I don't bother with alignment in my own games and I haven't for a while really".
Enlightening indeed.
To the original poster: in my ~4 years of running and playing 5e, alignment has never once come up. Even when we all bothered with recording it, nobody reported it, and to the best of my knowledge nobody at my table has ever said to themselves "what would an X-ish Y character do in this situation?". My table and myself see the system as an antiquated vestige of older designs with no real place nor any real need for a place in most modern games. To what extent we would use it at all, alignment would be solely for the DM to determine given that it has no impact at all save the impact the DM tells us it does. Many people like to lean on it for extraplanar 'Great Wheel' games, but honestly if you don't know what "Great Wheel" refers to, you can pretty safely skip it for now until you've got a more comfortable grip on the system.
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I mostly only focus on the L/C axis of alignment, and mostly only use it as a shorthand guide to indicate how various creatures will likely react to each other. Alignment can be a useful shorthand for a DM, but it shouldn’t be some binding monolithic rule or anything. And PC alignments can (and should) change based on their actions in-game.
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I don't think there's one way someone is "supposed" to do it. What's best, probably, is making it part of the Session 0 talk and making sure that everyone in your group is in agreement of how (or if) it will be used. In my current group, I don't think any of us have any idea what other people wrote down on their sheet, nor do we really care. As long as a person plays a character's personality consistently, with room for evolution as the story progresses, that's what really matters. And I'd bet that no one actually bothers to take the time to go in and change what it says on their sheet as their character evolves.
And if you are going to use it, it may also be valuable to come up with a definition for each alignment that everyone generally agrees on. This is probably the harder part. If there's one thing you can learn from these alignment threads, it's that pretty much no two people agree on what "chaotic good" or any of the other alignments means. Pick any well-realized fictional character, and there will be people who can make very good, convincing arguments rooted in the text for multiple alignments which describe that character's actions.
Or there was just a lot more nuance to what they were saying than you were willing to grant. Which is the problem with a lot of these discussions - there's a ton of nuance, and you can't communicate it all without writing an essay or three.
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.
As a DM I use it like Passive Perception. Apart from specifically linear “evil” or “good” magic items, it only really comes into play in the background for subtle things - hard to explain, but maybe how a bouncer/guard in a tavern might behave towards a Player Character based on body language
as a PC I use it to background my character but I tend to really immerse myself in them
The only time alignment mattered mechanically in my campaign was when it came to very specific monster abilities (like rakshasa damage vulnerabilities, for example), spell effects (like Glyph of Warding triggers) and magic items that had different effects based on character alignment. I ignore monster alignments written in stat blocks with as much frequency as I ignore monster HP and flavor text/lore - which is to say if it doesn't suit my and my players' needs, it gets adjusted.
So to answer OP's question, you're "supposed" to run alignments like you run any other rule at your table: however you think is best for your group and your play style.