I mean what more obvious way is there to escape “moral” dilemmas then to throw away responsibility for your actions and their consequences, and hide from it under so pathetic concept as “The right thing to do”.

Basically what we get is adventuring system that is designed to be simple and “easy going” morality/personality phylosophywise, good old Buttkicking for goodness. and then game system judges you for not taking this simplified system seriously and blames you of escaping responsibility.

I just have no idea how to roleplay in a setting like that, all attempts to roleplay deep characters that actually care about the consequences of their actions will lead you outside that alignment system.

So basically we end up with a system that is designed for typical human behavior, leaving all thinking individuals out of the game world.

I’m unhappy with other world/lore changes as well. well like videogame RPG-s I guess Tabletop games will suffer from “Laming down everything for masses to gain more profit” trend.

so I will just ingnore the fact of this new settings existence. I don’t actively play pnp games, and DnD 3.5, VTM: masquerade, Warhammer 40k should be enough for me.
Since bioware stopped producing dnd based games, I hope I won’t have to suffer through dnd 4.0 VG RPG.

It helped me see the chaotic good in a less glamorous light and i really do think that’s the truth of the Chaotic Good Character. My own example, John Mclain in Die Hard, how much good does he do? Loads! In the process he costs innocent bystanders, loads of property and probably jobs and definitely homes, whereas ordinarily he’s so difficult his wife and family can’t stand him. Chaotic. Very gritty characters to play, which i like, and very roleplay-material! “P

Hope that helps Chaotic’s further develop their characters and master the energies of chaos.
NB> Think Illidan of World of Warcraft too! Not the books or online game version, the Warcraft game series version. Those who grew up playing Warcraft will know what i mean. He’s the Night Elf brother of Malfurion, the one who rescues Tyrande Whisperwind. The one who… Maeiv the Hunter is after him and he is freed from prison by Tyrande. Know what i mean? Yeah, you do. Or you gotta play the series! ~_~

at the top:
Good – Lawful Good (i like to think Lawful Neutral and Lawful Stupid fit in here too)

in the middle:
Unaligned (Chaotic’s of two kinds fit in here, Chaotic Good only considers whats good to them, and therefore will always end up fighting goodness, whilst they also fight FOR goodness their chaotic nature rules over their good intentions, hence they are quite MALigned, almost evil at times) – Evil

at the bottom:
Chaotic Evil (inscribed onto the wall you read the Grafitti [satan wuz ere '96])

Generally, I just wait till he gets caught by the party, and let them deal with it in-character. Sometimes this leads to the loss of a player, sometimes they get the message.

On the evil side the the lawful evil and neutral evil alignment lacks actual game data to suggest a need for a distiction. Lawful evil people are your evil machinations with an eye for manipulation. Of course if his plans are found out he has no problem killing someone, sometimes without provocation as the PHB states “If he thinks he can get away with it.” Neutral evil is a little more free with their options but are basically played as lawful evil who is less patient. Chaotic evil is only used for evil characters who want an excuse to betray other pc’s and kill villagers and whine all butthurt because you had the town guards gang up and kill them, or the party kills him because he screws over the party.

In summary 4e is right to use alignment as a team identifier for borad moral compass direction. As previously it was way to define use for cumbersome spells, another mechanic that the dm has to watch to strip away the druid, cleric, paladin, and barbarian if they step out of sterotype, and a pidgeon-hole to force players to role-play too. Good riddance.

I wish I had a chance to play too. :/

Since DnD has always been about imagination, the move to allow for more freedom on the players end and for the “guidelines” to be more of just that, rather than hard and fast rules…I think, Is a good one.

what makes me kinda of angry is that 4e has almost no RPing restrictions. the game mechanics are focused almost completely around combat, yet they decide to completely restrict alignments. I agree w/ #32, just role play whichever way you want to…

I don’t mind it being tailored back a bit, but I wonder if newbies that start with 4E might miss out on that kind of insight.