» Mon Sep 27, 2010 10:39 pm
Good and Evil are irrelevant, there are only personal values.
Traditional alignment systems are too limiting, and definitions of good and evil differ widely. Part of what I like in RPGs are choices that needle around in the gray areas, and narrow alignments are part of what I always hated about D&D. Palladium/Rifts had a better alignment system where you could choose from alignments like principled, anarchist, aberrant, miscreant, etc. but even that didn't do a good job of modelling value systems.
I might say I'm good.
The guy sitting next to me might say "Then why are you killing every last elf you see?"
"Because I'm a good nord and elves are a cancer that must be removed!" Or if I'm playing an argonian I might kill all dunmer, etc.
Or how about a choice between saving a child or saving an entire village of people who have done some bad things, but might change for the better as well.
Or what if stealing something might harm a household but enable me to unmask a corrupt noble who harms many? What now if that 'many' is mostly fat merchants who can absorb the losses better than the household?
So in the absence of a fourth choice labeled "Alignments are irrelevant" I'll have to abstain.