Okay, I ballsed up my voting but I meant to select (1) None, (2) Dynamic, (3) Static.
I think the order->chaos/good->evil matrix is a pretty good stab at a simple framework that can help understand our characters and NPCs, and also appreciate its heritage within D&D. I’ll continue to use it to help get a handle on how to roleplay my characters, and think Larian can usefully bear it in mind when considering what options to give players and how NPCs and factions behave.
But I hope this will continue to sit invisibly in the background rather than being something explicitly recognised and responded to in the game because:
- it avoids the sort of frustration already mentioned in this thread where we disagree with the game where an action would sit in the nine-box matrix,
- it makes no sense to me that NPCs will know and respond to my alignment rather than specific things that I’ve done that they might reasonably have heard about (I might do lots of evil, but only when I’m sure no one will live to tell the tale),
- it makes no sense to me that I can only (try to) do certain things because of my current alignment,
- it’s an average or a tendency rather than reflecting nuance, for example I enjoy playing characters that would probably sit in the chaotic neutral box, but can swing between good and evil acts, potentially according to some internal logic or maybe just as the whim takes them, and I’d find it unsatisfying for such a character to be treated in the same way as one who consistently avoids either good or evil.
My second choice would be for the game to show its workings and play back to me the alignment it thought my character was displaying. I’d find that quite fun if it weren’t for the possibility of disagreement. Larian would have to be very careful, eg, not to make the mistake that I’ve observed when playing Kingmaker recently of confusing actions that are agnostic between good and evil or order and chaos and therefore shouldn’t move the dial on those axes, with actions that are trying to strike a balance between them and therefore should move us towards neutral. (Sounds like GM4Him has the same issue with the Pathfinder games.) The game would also need to let us express our intentions and motivations much more, which I think is highly desirable anyway so don’t see that as a problem in itself, but it would also open itself up to the sorts of disagreement about when and how far those intentions change the moral implications of an act that GM4Him again identifies above.
My third choice is to give a sort of statement of intent for my character in the form of a static alignment. Yes, I could then go on to play totally against it but that wouldn’t hurt anyone but myself. I don’t favour it because it doesn’t let me reflect how my character might change over the course of the adventure, so I can see that there might be an advantage in being able to redescribe your alignment at a small number of key points, but I have absolutely no interest in engaging with an ongoing debate with the game about where each of my actions sit in the nine-box matrix. I would find that really intrusive, particularly because as I’ve said I don’t think it should be mechanically significant.
I can see that not having alignment explicit in the game would rule out items or abilities that were tied to it, but I think that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
As for class progression, my admittedly limited understanding of 5e is that classes aren’t tied to specific alignments any more and that paladins for example are no longer required to be Lawful Good but rather to adhere to the oaths they take at level 3. So the game will presumably have to take a view for them on which options broke those oaths, and have a mechanism for dealing with paladins who don’t keep their oaths, but I don’t think that needs to have anything to do with alignment. (As an aside, it might be fun, though asking too much, to have similar responsiveness to clerics or other divine types acting in accordance or not with the tenets of their god or order.)
