Alignment serves an important purpose in romantic style fantasy games, but Mægwen was not designed with classical romantic aspects in mind. The D&D core rules attempt to treat behavior and personality on a three-tone sliding scale by introducing variations of the three core alignments: Good, Neutral, Evil. The core rules also introduce the arbitrary systems of Law and Chaos. When marrying these concepts a traditional D&D character may be Lawful Neutral, Chaotic Good, even Neutral Evil. The core books explain these alignment combinations well, but we felt that any assigned alignment is nothing more than an unnecessary crutch for a budding roleplayer. For this reason alignment has been removed from the Mægwen world.
Characters are supposed to grow during a campaign, their personalities changing and evolving based primarily on their experiences. A character's personality at the start of a game is definitely crucial, for it provides the skeleton to which new behavior molds. There are pros and cons to this approach and every GM using the Mægwen setting should weigh them accordingly. The lack of alignment removes such restrictions to classes. For example, on one side of the coin, a player is not required to be Lawful Good to play a Paladin in the Mægwen setting, though this does not mean the class sheds its conduct restrictions, it simply allows for more flexibility. On the other side of the coin, however, this may cause mechanics problems for spell casters; a GM must be slightly more creative in handling spells centered on alignment, such as Protection from Evil, Detect Alignment, etc. Because of these complications, this elimination of alignment is purely optional, yet it is seriously encouraged.