Quote from: Tod13;1073609Most of the complaints sound like complaints about players who are going to be jerks or murderhoboes or whatever regardless of whether alignment is in a game. I don't hate D&D's alignment system but my players and I really like DwD Studios Moral Code. You pick Somewhat, Very, or Totally for each Aspect and one option for each Aspect:

Kind or Cruel,
Focused or Unfocused,
Selfless or Selfish,
Honorable or Deceitful,
Brave or Cowardly.

My players really enjoyed and embraced it, without using as an excuse to play Cruel Selfish Stupid (a la Chaotic Stupid). Some of them even randomly assign degrees and options so they get to try out a different moral code.

Quote from: Brad;1073490I think alignment is a good idea IF you stick with the notion of teams. The Holmes five-alignment system (that also seems to be in the Monster Manual) is probably the best as it's a bit more granular than LNC but doesn't have dumb stuff like Neutral Evil which means you're REALLY evil..? I suppose daemons justify NE alignment, but then you have to wonder how they have any form of society because if they're totalitarian with a rigid hierarchy, that seems LE, and if they're "might makes right" that seems CE. When you start down the road of trying to make sense of alignment beyond "good guys vs. bad guys" you get into all sorts of situations like this that have nothing to do with fun and are best left out of the game.

I always figured Chaotic meant monsters, Lawful meant humanity (and their allies), and Neutral was nature, outside the realm of the L-C conflict. That implies Chaotic necromancers want to bring down society, and a Lawful lord, even if he's evil, is still advocating for civilization and doesn't want a bunch of orcs or goblins taking over his lands. Neutral elves and druids and faeries don't care either way as their morality is totally alien and incomprehensible to the monsters or humans. If you throw in G-E, things like NE and NG don't really make any sense in this context, hence the five-alignment system. "Good" faeries just seem that way because they're not trying to murder you; or they think it's fun to pick one side over another.

tl;dr - Alignment is fun within the context of the game if you don't take it too seriously and understand it's simply a jersey you wear to make sure you're killing the right people. This, of course, is entirely viewing alignment from a D&D perspective. I made some blog posts about this years ago and my position hasn't changed much.