(10-08-2013, 05:18 PM)Nimarhie Wrote: I've always found the alignment system rather stilted... it's too black and white, when life is more chaotic good/evil with maybe a bit of neutral tossed in to confuse people.
People look at the alignment system and see True Good as being an untouchable saint, which is how I have always thought they were represented. You don't drink, don't swear, don't bang hookers (lol), you don't take rewards for good deeds and on and on and all. It's more of a caricature of good than anything else. Just like True Evil has always been portrayed as moustache-twirling men in tophats and black capes... or raspy robotic voices with a fetish for choking people.
In that sense, both sides of the coin are boring and unimaginative. But if you allow the pure-as-the-driven-snow True Good person to have something... broken with them, like they have a psychological flaw, or they secretly like poking nymphs (in *that* way) at night... in barns; then you have a more interesting character. Vader's back story in the prequels made him an interesting villain, instead of the rather 2D villain he was in the original trilogy. He had a spark of good in him smoldering away for 20 years (?) that ultimately led him to save his son in ROTJ.
tl;dr: True Good - generic and boring; true evil - never played well enough and also generic and boring.
Personally I am more of a fan of Palladium's alignment system than the one for D&D. I think it allows for more flexibility and it has alignments like Abberant Evil which would rather hang out with good characters than evil ones due to their personal code.
A good FFXIV lore site: http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Eorzea
