[LennonCook]

Originally posted by Q'alooaith: Allignments should not be told to the players.. You as the DM should keep track of how much the players are shifting towards good or evil, they players should not pick their alignmets at the start of a champaine, but should start with a neutral rating, from their use their actions to work out if they are acting in a good way or an evil way, from your position as the all seeing one.. Prot. from Evil works by the karma, undead have bad karma (violation the natural order of the world will do that to a person).. So rather than think of it as somone deciding to put a shield aganst who they think is evil, but as the caster opening a connection to some spritual plane.. Good and evil are subjective, you the DM are not.

Exactly. Alignment is metadata: it should be defined by the character rather than defining the character. The emphasis should always be on a good story - even things like strength scores and weapon stats and even levels shouldn't be anything the player needs to know. The description of an item and the actions of the character should be adequate - if the fourth wall needs to be broken, something is wrong.

Thus, which ruleset do I prefer? Neither. In my experience, both focus too heavily on the numbers and the dice. Although this may be different in a PNP game: I have only had the experience of dnd-based computer games, of which I've yet to see a realy good implentation. I think an ideal to strive for is a cross between Quest for Glory, Neverwinter Nights and Planescape: Torment . Your alignment is adjusted automatically depending on your actions; your stats raise automatically depending on how you use them. Party members do their own thing, rather than being directly controllable by the player. But I think that the character record in these games is poorly implemented. It should idealy be a picture and the biography, nothing more. I think that hiding details such as the alignment and class from the player actually opens the way for more advanced implementations, and a more generally fun experience.