Design and Development: Alignment, Part 1

With the De&De of the Paladin temporarily on hold (not because it stalled mind, but because we actually came up with a really great idea that needs further elaboration), I've decided to raise a brand new De&De, this one relating to alignment.

In LL and Basic before it, your alignment was restricted to just Lawful, Chaotic, or Neutral. There was no axis of Good and Evil, those were traits that came up as actions, not because of alignment. Despite this, there was still spells like Detect Evil, leaving much of what was "evil" up to the DM to determine.

The AEC, with its 1st Ed. Lite approach, adds the optional usage of Good and Evil, creating the nine choice alignment system most people playing later editions are familiar with.

The question is, what do we use for Deminar?

When it was designed for 3rd edition, Deminar had all nine alignments, these factored into classes, the gods, cosmology, etc. like was par for the course for later settings.

Personally, I dislike alignments entirely, I feel that it can restrict a player, labeling how he would act morally. This should be something that comes up through play, not because it's something they wrote on their character sheet. However, that only works with more advanced players, so I understand having alignment present as something to remember how a character should act. A place for the DM to point to and say, "Well, remember, your character is lawful, so he probably won't steal from the helpless old lady."

Due to its inclusion in many a spell and even class/species, I don't think Deminar should do away with alignment. But it still begs the question of which alignment system we should use.

Much of Deminar's cosmology revolves around all nine alignments, major gods are tied to alignments like Lawful Good, not just Lawful, as are their domains. Each intelligent species was originally tied to one of the nine alignments (not saying each species had to be that alignment, but that each species was predisposed towards a certain alignment due to their creation). Certain classes had certain abilities based on their alignment, etc.

Now, you don't have to have an alignment such as Lawful Good to have a God of that moral compass, it can infer that he is generally good, but without such a label. However, dropping the Good/Evil alignment tracks break up some of the explanation and symmetry that exists within the setting.

On the other hand, not having Good and Evil as alignment choices is true to the source materiel, and indeed, could alienate fans of the system from picking up our books for adding what they think is a restrictive idea. As the AEC says itself:

"People familiar with other "advanced" games will notice that the standard alignment system does not account for "good" and "evil." This is because these concepts are left to interpretation. This is a philosophy more in line with classic pulp fantasy and science fiction. In this way of thinking, the "highest philosophy" is the conflict between law and chaos, with the balance of neutrality between. In this philosophical universe, concepts of good and evil are merely a means to attain the goals of any one of these greater spheres of thought. In this game, then, "evil" and "good" are much more situational than doctrines of behavior. Evil will often be associated with chaos, and good with law, but this need not always be the case."

Which I think makes sense for the steam pulp setting we're going for. But again, see above about the pros of the full nine alignment system.

So, what to do?