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A gamer debate about alignment? This is new and interesting.

The most successful campaigns I ran tended to be neutral merc type campaigns. Things went so much smoother when we didn't have to argue for 10 minutes why the paladin was still lawful and not chaotic even though he enjoyed a good practical joke now and again. The alignment system worked a whole lot better when you took at as a template for how a character would generally act rather than having it lock your character into a preconceived notion/trope.

I tell my players to use it as a general guideline of their morals, rather than the defining aspect of how they should act. Especially when teaching new players, I found the "guiding alignment" idea works well in helping decide how their character would act rather than the players themselves, but I always encourage freedom and development beyond that. After all, characters shouldn't be a bag of hit points with a race/class/alignment combo...they should be organic, real characters, though mind you, this depends on your DM and his style of running a game.