Do D&D Rules For “alignment” Really Help?

On some newspapers, every week there is an astrology column. We all know it is nonsense, not (only) because you can’t predict the future, but mainly because you try to divide the entire human race into twelve groups, where each group has a specific destiny.
D&D rules seems to have only nine groups, they are called “alignments”. For those who are not familiar with it, the alignment in D&D is a combination of two things, each with 3 options. Good, neurtal or evil which defines how he character reacts to moral choices, and lawful, neutral and chaotic which define what are the character opinions on the neccecity of laws.

Well, that does seem to cover most of the options, so what’s wrong with it?
The problem is that now the players don’t use alignment only as a moral guideline of the character, but also as how is the only proper way they should react.
Even if your group has fifty people in it, it will never have more then nine opinions as long as the players ask “what should a chaotic good character do” instead of “what should I do”.

Let’s take an example to show another problem: In the world, there are several gods, each with his own followers and demands, most of them fighting each other. So far, a very standart campaign.
Each god has his own order of paladins, and for some reason, tow paladins of different gods find themselves facing each other.
Both paladins are lawful good, they follow their god’s rules to the letter and do everything to eradicate evil, which just happends to be the paladin that is currently standing infront of them.

When fighting each other, what do you think will happen if they cast a spell called “detect evil” that is meant to discover the other’s alignment?
On one hand, they should both see the other as evil because from where they are standing, the other paladin is an evil heretic that resents their god.
On the other hand, both paladins are by defenition - lawful good.

The contradiction is caused because the alignment rules assume there is an objective morality, when in reality morality has a lot to do with the culture.

To make things even worse, most D&D books also have a set alignment for races. That means, that with only a few exceptions, an entire race of creatures is chaotic evil.

Think about it, except to satisfy your need of a good “cannon fodder” for the players, does it make any sense at all to have an entire species of inteligent creatures with the same exact behaviour?

My advice?

- use alignment only as a very loose guideline.
- motivate the players to discover their own alignment, and not to set one according to the class they want to play.
- replace alignment demands for classes with several objective simple rules they must obey.
- do not use any spell that can see the alignment, unless it will work only for extreme cases.