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[NullForceOmega]

You aren't tied to the product in the same way you are tied to a country, you don't live there, you don't own property there, you don't have money in it's banks.  Your comparison is flawed to say the least.

There is no argument that can convince you, and you certainly haven't actually tried to put forth one against the subject in question, so why don't you start.

[My Name is Immaterial]

I like the alignment system. It is a convienent way to quickly describe a character's likely actions. I would, however, be interested in a more Myers-Brigg type thing. On that thought:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Introvert/Extrovert
Honorable/Rougish
Loyal/Untrue
Careful/Reckless
Obedient(to laws)/Criminal
Can anyone think of any?

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I was going to wall of text and explain the system in a reasonable fashion, but that doesn't matter.  You don't own the property, you are just a customer, if you don't like the product buy something else.

Lose the attitude. If you love the system so much, defend it. besides, that's an incredibly flawed argument. Games, in most cases, are much more than just "products", take american football for example, that shit is a WAY OF LIFE. Rules change in that. Likewise, many friends are made and kept over P&P roleplaying games. Known fact: there are a lot of rules people disagree with. They homebrew new rules sometimes. Instead of just saying "Here, this is the game, fuck you." Give us a good reason why we should use it other than that it's mildly convenient. Hell, who knows? Maybe Bay12 could home-brew better rules.

I'm personally not even advocating you SHOULD change the system, I think it's "okay", but doesn't mean there can't be discussion about it. In the end it's 'A' mechanic, it doesn't make or break DnD, and quite possibly there could be other systems that do it better. I'm not asking you to change you mind, just provide an argument for why it stays the way it is other than "It's already here, get off my goddamn land." and entertain the possibility that there could be a different/bette system.

EDIT: @MyName: That's a cool concept, something I always wanted to try in an RPG without the shackles of hard stats already being there.

[Tack]

I like the alignment system. It is a convienent way to quickly describe a character's likely actions. I would, however, be interested in a more Myers-Brigg type thing. On that thought:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Introvert/Extrovert
Honorable/Rougish
Loyal/Untrue
Careful/Reckless
Obedient(to laws)/Criminal
Can anyone think of any?

Fettered/Unfettered
Necktie/Bacon

[NullForceOmega]

Noone here has detailed a 'better system' so I can't exactly frame an argument  based on what you do or don't like about the damned thing.  You want to homebrew a no alignment set of rules go ahead, but don't expect me to try to justify the existence of a system that predates my birth by over a decade without some actual points to start from.

[Sergarr]

I'm just trying to have you give me one good reason why Alignment system should stay as it is.

But I think I'm not going to get that one. Probably because it's non existent.

Because Alignment system is stupid bullshit which condones entire races as inherently evil, which gives the Lawful Good Paladins perfect justification to conduct genocide towards them, which makes it Lawful Stupid, and which generally replaces the good roleplaying (which is what D&D is about, because it's a fucking Role Playing Game!) with a scripted set of reactions, and which has spawned the whole "True Neutral is the real good" bullshit as the part of natural averse reaction to this system which glorifies genocide of the "inherently evil" races and labels it as "unquestionably good".

This is a system that has the only purpose: to give justification to murder, and to make it possible to reveal "acceptable" targets with a 1st level spell. It's the system that has spawned the infamous "murder hobo", the people who play RPGs only to kill other people (oh, sorry, NPCs) they can get away with and loot their bodies, and labeled this behavior as "good". This is a system that has killed roleplaying and spawned the endless tide of mass murderers out of its corpse. This is an inherently evil and shallow system and RPG games would be much, much better if this system was never invented.

Noone here has detailed a 'better system' so I can't exactly frame an argument  based on what you do or don't like about the damned thing.  You want to homebrew a no alignment set of rules go ahead, but don't expect me to try to justify the existence of a system that predates my birth by over a decade without some actual counterpoints to start from.

You know what else predates your birth? Racial segregation. Alignment system has reminded me that this thing existed. Maybe it's because alignment system is really convenient for the purpose of racial segregation. I wonder why.

[nenjin]

We've gotten along for years essentially writing official alignments out of D&D. We can do that because everyone generally understands the concept and tries to obey the rules, like only evil people cast Cause Wounds, without writing an Alignment on their character sheet. But generally I've found Alignments less and less useful as a player as time has gone on. It's primarily useful for teaching new players how to think like a character instead of themselves. And lot of times it's only there to punish people deviating from classical stereotypes. I think they're only useful for NPCs and monsters, and then only as guides on how to play them. Literally interpreting Alignments has always been rules lawyer wank.

[Dutchling]

like only evil people cast Cause Wounds.

Well that's just silly. Are Paladins evil for using their weapons too then?

[scriver]

Because Alignment system is stupid bullshit which condones entire races as inherently evil, which gives the Lawful Good Paladins perfect justification to conduct genocide towards them, which makes it Lawful Stupid, and which generally replaces the good roleplaying (which is what D&D is about, because it's a fucking Role Playing Game!) with a scripted set of reactions, and which has spawned the whole "True Neutral is the real good" bullshit as the part of natural averse reaction to this system which glorifies genocide of the "inherently evil" races and labels it as "unquestionably good".

"Always Chaotic Evil" hasn't been a thing since 2nd Ed, as far as I know.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

We've gotten along for years essentially writing official alignments out of D&D. We can do that because everyone generally understands the concept and tries to obey the rules, like only evil people cast Cause Wounds, without writing an Alignment on their character sheet. But generally I've found Alignments less and less useful as a player as time has gone on. It's primarily useful for teaching new players how to think like a character instead of themselves. And lot of times it's only there to punish people deviating from classical stereotypes. I think they're only useful for NPCs and monsters, and then only as guides on how to play them. Literally interpreting Alignments has always been rules lawyer wank.

This is essentially my view on the subject as well.

[Tack]

I wasn't gonna join this discussion simply because neither Sergarr nor NullForce were making any points at all, let alone good ones.
But now that you've thrown that out there I can justify sharing my own thoughts.

The Chao/Law Good/Evil scale is meant to simplify an alignment in the Objective, not the subjective.
That Objective state can either be our world (usually is) or the world it's set in. In the second type you can have some very interesting ideas of chaotic, lawful and neutral, depending on the setting:

Pre English conquest, the gravest of all crimes in Welsh law was not murder, but theft. And while armed robbery was considered excusable under some circumstances, theft by stealth – theft absolute – could be a capital crime. Stealing from your own host, who'd taken you in and given you shelter… well. Very bad

However, most are due to OUR perceptions, OUR views of right and wrong. If we come across a race (AN ENTIRE RACE) which participates in slavery, mass murder, delights in killing and steals from others as much as they do eachother, we would perceive them as Chaotic Evil.
The entire race in DnD terms IS that, don't let the webcomic fool you. If someone decides to do a detraction from the trope and make a Drizzt Goblin, they can go ahead, but it's an exception from the rule- which is why it creates so much controversy.

In a similar fashion, the alignment restrictions of classes like Barbarian and Paladin are all in order to make the character abide by objective constants. A barbarian who removes his shoes to drink tea in the sitting room has ceased to be a barbarian as much as a Paladin who burns the orphanage is no longer a paladin.
Therefore, it's up to the GM to figure out what counts as the objective morality of that game. Are all lesser races ok to kill? Is it bad to kill a woman or child, irregardless of the race? All that stuff is up to your GM, and sure you can judge him on it, but you'd better follow the rules.

If you had a character who was bound to their 'Internal Morality Scale', then either they'd never progress or grow as characters, or they'd be able to Sell any little horrible thing they do.

I was playing a Paladin at one point and there was a guy in our group who had been laid with a curse of compulsive gambling. His entire fortune was in jeapordy from this point on, so I bet him his entire fortune that he could go five minutes without making a bet, and then asked him to bet on snail racing or something silly- thus dooming him to give all of his money to me. He couldn't stop me, because the entire curse.
Point of the story here is, whilst I was doing it for His sake, the GM says 'As he goes to hand over his pouch, you get a massive foreboding feeling. This isn't Right'.

It wasn't. A paladin doesn't cheat or steal, even to protect or help.

Ethics is complicated. If you really wanted to make complex alignments, you should see if each character is Utilitarian (Most Good + Least Bad), Consequentialism (End justifies the Means) or Deontological (Doing bad things is bad, no matter what).

[NullForceOmega]

Tack did a substantially better job articulating that than I could have.  It isn't an absolutist system, and really was never intended to be.  You can't actually use 'I'm lawful good' as an argument to justify wiping out whole races, unless your DM is a complete moron. 

Sergarr:  That may just be the most idiotic comparison I've ever seen.  If you can't even attempt to keep your cool on an issue this irrelevant then you shouldn't post.

[Arcvasti]

Noone here has detailed a 'better system' so I can't exactly frame an argument  based on what you do or don't like about the damned thing.  You want to homebrew a no alignment set of rules go ahead, but don't expect me to try to justify the existence of a system that predates my birth by over a decade without some actual counterpoints to start from.

When you can actually see someone's alignment in-game, via detect evil or something, it gets kinda stupid, especially with detect evil/whatever being such a low-level spell. An alignment is a roleplaying generalization of a characters basic morals and has little to no place in the actual mechanics. Its far quicker and easier to represent someone who's "Chaotic Good" rather then having a specific personality to give them. Its difficult to objectively define someone as evil and giving that capacity to a low-level spell[Castable at will for some classes] seems sort of bleh. And that's not even getting into how annoying detect X spells are to factour in to more mystery-esque adventures. And changing player alignment is actually handled pretty well in valnilla 3.5e, from the sections I've read on it in the DMG[Which exist specifically to prevent/discourage the stupidity Sergious encountered]. Honestly, if you just changed all alignment affecting stuff to only affecting outsiders/clerics/paladins, it would be much better. In 5e, detect spells[And POSSIBLY other types of spells, haven't checked] only factour in alignment with regards to outsiders/clerics/paladins.

FAKEEDIT: Wow, that's a lot of posts.

And the "Always chaotic evil" thing comes mainly from Tolkien's orcs. Which is, if I remember correctly, only true in THAT case because of the direct mental intervention of a controlling evil force[IE: Sauron]. And yeah, an entire culture whose ethics completely go against those considered "Good" by the grand final arbitrator of it[Because, in the valnilla D & D universe, there ARE objectively good entities], could totally be described as evil. Where it gets thorny is when an entire race[Or at least, MOST of one] is considered to always be of one culture and one morality.

[Flying Dice]

Alignments are useful as general descriptors of behavior, but trying to treat them as physical and mental forces outside of the ways in which they are used for spells and abilities is rather asinine. Especially the way that so many people try to interpret Lawful as a monodimensional thing that's entirely about literally obeying the law rather than upholding and sticking to a specific mode of conduct. There's even an argument to be made, for example, about Lawful Whatever thieves in a setting where crime is organized and dictated by codes of honor and obligation, &c.

Basically it's pretty gamey to try to treat people as alignments. They're there for certain spells and powers, and to give people unfamiliar with the character a good one-phrase description of how they think and act.

[Sergarr]

Because Alignment system is stupid bullshit which condones entire races as inherently evil, which gives the Lawful Good Paladins perfect justification to conduct genocide towards them, which makes it Lawful Stupid, and which generally replaces the good roleplaying (which is what D&D is about, because it's a fucking Role Playing Game!) with a scripted set of reactions, and which has spawned the whole "True Neutral is the real good" bullshit as the part of natural averse reaction to this system which glorifies genocide of the "inherently evil" races and labels it as "unquestionably good".

"Always Chaotic Evil" hasn't been a thing since 2nd Ed, as far as I know.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/demon.htm
"Alignment:    Always chaotic evil"

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lycanthrope.htm
Werewolf:
"Alignment:    Always chaotic evil"

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dragonTrue.htm
"Chromatic Dragons

Chromatic dragons form the evil branch of dragonkind. They are aggressive, greedy, vain, and nasty. "
"Alignment:    Always chaotic evil"

I literally typed in "Always chaotic evil" into d20srd hypertext search.