Most of you know that I run a Dungeons and Dragons game a few times a month. I ordered myself the 4th Edition core rulebooks as an after-Christmas present and now we’re starting a new 4th Edition campaign for the new year (sans Mardok the Corpse-Tripper. We love you!).

The catapult also functions as a Skittles delivery vector!

There’s plenty of opinion about 4th Edition and I’m not going to run a fanboy flag up the internet pole regarding the OBVIOUS SUPERIORITY of one or another, but I’m especially fascinated by the new alignement system.  I like it.  I really do.

But I’m not going to use it in the upcoming campaign. Alignments are banished!

When I played a character in 3.5 I spent a lot of time thinking about how my sorceror would react based on his alignment (chaotic good) rather than roleplaying a decision and figuring out how it aligned later.  It made the ethical decisions seem shallow instead of deep character traits.  Alignment hindered my roleplaying experience because I was using what I now understand to be a description of past deeds to prescribe future deeds.  Starting as out as a new adventurer, I only had my backstory behind me and that did not have the same challenges that an adventurer would face.  That time that you saved a cat from a tree is not dissimilar from delving into a red dragon’s lair to save a prince, but the varying degrees involved displays exactly how committed you are to helping the prince (or saving the prince so that he can give you booty).

Predicting a character’s alignment from the first game would be like me saying that I’m going to be remembered for my bucolic, florid prose.  A PC can angle towards a certain alignment but they’re not prescient.  Whether or not she is really unaligned or actually chaotic evil depends on the context of her deeds.  For instance, McClane from Die Hard, where does he fit?  Nowhere on this chart!  He’s Chaotically (and I would argue, Chronically) Badass.

(Of course, the vast array of ethical issues that alignment raises are staggering and would make for a fascinating game of Dungeons and Dragons.)

Moreover, characters change during the course of an adventure.  That’s roleplaying.

As a Dungeon Master, I’ll keep rough track of my players’ alignments if there’s ever a game mechanic that needs alignment values to resolve.  But I think that it’s more important to the fun of the game that the players feel unhindered in roleplaying a character.  The less they’re shackled to a muddled system of ethics, the freer they’ll be to explore their characters.