The Gaming Den

There's been a lot of arguments about why alignments are bad and ugly and honestly anyone who has had conflict at their gaming table knows that DnD alignments are nonfunctional. So what DO you use to determine alignment? Do you just not use it? Has there been a satisfactory system of alignments you've encountered?

I've made the decision that I want some rails to be put on a given player character's behavior but I also am well past the decision to not include the DnD alignment system in my game. Currently I have sporadic ideas yet no write ups. This is possibly one of the largest walls I've faced as I have at least written something on most other aspects of my game.

Most of the people I play with are pretty solid on Good/Evil.

But for Law/Chaos, I avoid them as an ethical thing entirely, and instead re-wrote them to be forces/principles--Order and Chaos--that are involved in magic and matter. Both are necessary for everything to run. Pure order is as bad as pure chaos, because it's changelessness vs. nothing but. Stability and entropy.

And that means the players don't exactly need to worry about if they're Orderly Good or not.

There's still a few spell effects, but apart from taking out Dictum and the Chaos version of Holy Word, it holds up well. You can even keep Mechanus and Limbo--both are nearly pure representatives of their force. I say nearly, because pure order would be frozen, forever, unchanging, and pure chaos would be unable to to have any order or system on it at all. Mechanus resists change, but it still happens. Your immediate vicinity in Limbo can be shaped into favorable terrain, if I recall right.

I like to think a little along For Valor's lines from here: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=142300

Lawful: You respect people who call themselves your superiors (not sure how to define that... but it means respecting the bureacracy).

Anarchic: You don't respect people who call themselves your superiors (also not 100% sure how to define this... but it means trying to subvert government)


Good: You respect people who you view as inferior to you.

Evil: You don't respect people who you view as inferior to you.

Chaos: GIANT FROG

Exalted: You are totally dedicated to one of the above 5, and are considered neutral for whatever other half of the alignment you were looking at.

Neutral: You're in the middle!

However, I think it's very difficult to put any concept on alignment, and prefer to actually scrap the whole thing. I don't use alignment spells of any kind, and Paladins' detect good ability is a Magical-Tea-Party style flavor ability that lets them know what things the creature did that the paladin likes (evil paladins--hurting townsfolk, good paladins--donating to the poor) and what things the creature did that the paladin doesn't like. It goes back, like, 5 minutes.

The best way to do alignments to do refuse to give any demihuman an alignment tag that isn't true neutral. Only devils, angels, demons, slaad, modrons, Gods etc. get alignment tags. For the purposes of Detect Alignment, Magic Circle Against Foo and Protection From Foo, etc., you are the alignment of whoever you're working for.

The Gods get alignments, but they're mainly political camps: Good Gods want to be nice to demihumans, Evil Gods want to control humans, Lawful Gods want to make the universe more orderly and Chaotic Gods want it to be all Limboish. And individual Gods have their own, personal agendas, like promoting Art, making the world a better place for the gnomish race, or whatever.

I think that even with a good alignment system, it'd be easy to have it go wrong. People like labels. Instead of, "Is this character particularly aligned?", it's, "What alignment am I?". So they write Chaotic Good on their character sheet because it sounds cool. Then later on they look down at the paper and think, "Hmm, I should be doing something giant frog right now.."

The truth is, most characters are neutral. They adventure for personal power. It's often better to take the "good" quest and be the hero of the city then to do some bad shit and have to live all alone in a spooky castle. They fight the evil tyrant because he threatens to conquer the country they're in charge of. They save the world because they now own a sizable portion of it.

Alignment isn't for everyone. A typical adventuring party could be one Good guy and four unaligned guys. Or five unaligned guys. Note that they're unaligned and not Neutral. That's a whole different thing.

Save Good for the really selfless characters. Save Evil for something more than selfish.

If I had to write an alignment section for a pdf, a lot of it would probably be a list of questions. Such as,
Does your character keep his promises?

Would your character do something he considers wrong to serve the greater good?

Does your character value sentient life and try to preserve it whenever possible?

Would your character defy someone in a position of authority if he knew it would have a better outcome?

These are just general character building questions but they teach you heaps more than two words on a character sheet.

I think the best idea we had on this issue is the one which involved choosing actual philosophies for the factions of the wheel.

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=92906

I don't generally use it except for undead, outsiders and (to a lesser extent) clerics & paladins.

My general assessment is Good = "merciful", Evil = "cruel", Chaotic = "flaky/inconsistent", Lawful = "dependable/consistent". But I don't worry about it too much, because no one really cares too much.

MGuy wrote:So what DO you use to determine alignment? Do you just not use it? Has there been a satisfactory system of alignments you've encountered?

I've been lucky so far in that I haven't gotten into any real arguments about it at the gaming table. My biggest problem I've had with PC personal issues is that they often roll up a bunch of badass loners who have no reason to hang out other then the meta-reason that their players are sitting at the same table. I have thought about just dropping alignment, but I've never tried it.

I've run into odd alignment conundrums with the MC that I'm currently playing under, but to date, I've just taken a "Fuck it. I'm here to have fun" philosophy. This came up specifically when I had a neutral PC that had just defeated a bunch of orcs, and I was debating the best way to handle them. The MC told me it was actually Good to slit their throats as they lay their unconscious because most orcs are Evil and blah blah blah it's normal here. I thought that was odd, but then I thought "Fuck it. I don't really care that much.", and my wizard became a throat-slitting asshole with "Neutral" written on his sheet, and I just didn't care. Of course, I think part of the reason I was so passive about that is because it was a quickly-thrown-together PC with next to no personality.

Likewise, I running a Dread Necromancer under the same MC with "Lawful Evil" written on her sheet even though she's more of a dark, snarky Lawful Neutral. But she casts [Evil] spells and necromancy is blah blah blah, so, whatever. I guess Holy weapons will hurt me more.

Alignment in my games is just handled by a simple yes/no tag.

Dogfucking: Yes/No

So you get "Word of Dogfucking", "Word of not fucking dogs" and "Smite Dogfucker", but otherwise its' pretty much the same. Causes a lot fewer arguments than good/evil, although I've never had a mixed party.

I go along the lines of:

Law: You believe that rules of the society should be more important than the will of the individual.

Chaos: The opposite.

Good & Evil: represent mindset, rather than actions. Its perfectly normal to be Evil without acting upon such ideas. Being Evil is not an admission of guilt.

Though, to be fair, I don't use Law/Chaos effects in my games, and there's no alignment screening during job interview because there just isn't, but well, I personally can't be bothered with it.

I wrote a rules light system for ADVENTURE TIME, and the alignment system (which is needed 'cuz Finn actually says "that would be against my alignment") turned to to be pretty simple and neat. Basically you are either good or evil, and behave politely or impolitely to those around you. And there is the mandatory alignment chart:

• 	Polite	Jerk
  Good	Finn Jake Princess Bubblegum Tree Trunks The Duke of Nuts	Marcelline the Vampire Queen Donny the Grass Ogre Lumpy Space Princess
  Evil	The Business Men The Why-Wolves Ricardio	Ice King Marcelline's Dad Penny the Thief

  
  

MGuy wrote:There's been a lot of arguments about why alignments are bad and ugly and honestly anyone who has had conflict at their gaming table knows that DnD alignments are nonfunctional. So what DO you use to determine alignment? Do you just not use it? Has there been a satisfactory system of alignments you've encountered?

I handle it like this:

1. Most intelligent creatures are neutral.

2. Evil or Good are the very extremes - Paladins, clerics dedicated to their gods, fiends and angels, psychopaths etc.

3. If someone is very disciplined, organized and has a code of conduct or principles he sticks to (mostly) he'd be lawful. If someone is whimsical, easily swayed, flexible, unpredictable, he'd be chaotic. How they react to "the law of the land" depends entirely on their personal views - a paladin is not required to respect authority if it does not jive with his code, or the teachings of his god.

4. Characters are not judged by modern morals.

Alignment in D&D only ever really made sense right at the beginning. it wasn't supposed to be some kind of measure of personality, it was about which side you were on in the great battle between good and evil. Who you were aligned with. Originally there were only 2 alignments, and I was shocked when I discovered it was Law and Chaos that were in place first given the clusterfuck that they now represent.

It all makes sense when you realise that early D&D writers read as much Moorcock as Tolkien, and Chaos/Order just meant Team Evil & Team Good. So, when you get down to it, the alignment system was never about personalities anyway which is probably why it is so horrifically bad at modelling them.

So, do you want an alignment system, which is a code representing who you are loyal to, or do you want a personality system? If you are going for the second the Storyteller system had a much better setup, in which you had 2 words that described your personality (Your Nature and your Demeanour). Your Demeanor being the face you showed to the world, and your inner Nature set how you recovered Willpower points. It nicely mirrored the fact that most people have motivations for doing things that aren't clear cut, and often pretend to be doing things for selfless reasons when really its to feed some psychological need. Personally, I think there should have been some mechanical weakness to each personality type, such as a condition that made you lose Willpower, to incentive people to hide their true Nature.

If you do want more of an alignment system it's going to be quite heavily tied into your world. It's more like being part of a faction than having some kind of OCD forcing you to follow or not follow certain rules.

Kobajagrande wrote:I go along the lines of:

Law: You believe that rules of the society should be more important than the will of the individual.

Chaos: The opposite.

Good & Evil: represent mindset, rather than actions. Its perfectly normal to be Evil without acting upon such ideas. Being Evil is not an admission of guilt.

Though, to be fair, I don't use Law/Chaos effects in my games, and there's no alignment screening during job interview because there just isn't, but well, I personally can't be bothered with it.

I really like this. I find it simple and honestly seems the closest to my veiw on the matter.
... the only thing missing from that is how it expands into "Giant Frog" and really most of us really enjoy giant frog.
... but this...

Alignment in my games is just handled by a simple yes/no tag.

Vynomous, man... if it wasn't for the squick I know it'd cause I'd sig that awesome shit.

Edit: (Cause what red rob said but more...) tell me is there a system aside from D&D that has an alignment system that works really well?

Well I like the stuff in the upper planes thread though I'm not dealing with any planes other than prime yet. I figure if I'm going to do an alignment system it'll be less focused on alignments but rather some overarching character traits. So far I've got four facets of a character that I would deem important both as a player and as a MC.

1 - Goal/Ambition/Intent. The thing that a character is working towards is always important so I figure this should be the first thing someone sets on their character sheets. A character should generally always be working toward something be it complex or simple.

2 - Motivation - Taking from the Planes Thread this should be what drives the character toward their goal/ambition/etc. Things like Greed, Glory, Altruism, Revenge, Love, Righteousness (IE religion, Ideology, etc), Fear, Envy, Admiration, etc would be chosen for this.

3 - Trait - This is where your major character trait would be. Greedy, Reckless, Brave, Stubborn, Savage, Noble (as in the good kind), etc whichever fits your character the best. While a character can be deeper than the one trait I intend on the trait to have some kind of mechanics to it that influence a character in certain situations such as being greedy causes you to be greedy, being noble causes you to make the appropriate decisions.

4 - Allegiance - Basically just who's side are you on. This would have a lot to do with the setting I make but the general idea is here.

At present this is all just fun stuff to write on your character sheet. However as I ponder over this I will try to fit some mechanics into this somewhere. The trait would probably be easiest as a number of games already have mechanics that deal with character traits/flaws.

Putting together actual concrete ideas for an alignment system is problematic because alignment itself is amorphous, not concrete.
When you ask, "What is good?" no two people will answer the same.

If you doubt me walk up to a stranger today and ask, "What's good?"

Furthermore, since the concept is ever changing to fit humanity's personal needs and justifications, even if you did manage to construct a concrete system alignment would morph again and we would end up here considering this matter a new in a century or less.

Thus, it is better to glaze over the detailed workings of alignment and not weigh too heavily upon it in your considerations.

No one is going to ask you to declare good, evil, or neutral at the top of your job applications. It's irrelevant.

Hicks wrote:I wrote a rules light system for ADVENTURE TIME, and the alignment system (which is needed 'cuz Finn actually says "that would be against my alignment") turned to to be pretty simple and neat. Basically you are either good or evil, and behave politely or impolitely to those around you. And there is the mandatory alignment chart:

• 	Polite	Jerk
  Good	Finn Jake Princess Bubblegum Tree Trunks The Duke of Nuts	Marcelline the Vampire Queen Donny the Grass Ogre Lumpy Space Princess
  Evil	The Business Men The Why-Wolves Ricardio	Ice King Marcelline's Dad Penny the Thief

  
  

I really like that Hicks. Knowing a simpler system is much more effective at creating new alignment systems than a complicated one is.

I've debated how to make Alignments, Ethics, or Morals, part of the system. I want them to be things that people buy into; and the more that they buy into them, the more they can use their Dice pool against. Probably the same way that every other power type gets to apply to other specific dice pools.

Midnight_v wrote:Edit: (Cause what red rob said but more...) tell me is there a system aside from D&D that has an alignment system that works really well?

Magic: the Gathering's color wheel?

Hicks wrote:

• 	Polite	Jerk
  Good	Finn Jake Princess Bubblegum Tree Trunks The Duke of Nuts	Marcelline the Vampire Queen Donny the Grass Ogre Lumpy Space Princess
  Evil	The Business Men The Why-Wolves Ricardio	Ice King Marcelline's Dad Penny the Thief

  
  

I could replace "Polite" and "Jerk" with "Lawful" and "Chaotic" and not notice. I actually think that dropping to four combinations like that, dropping the Neutral category, is an easy fix that causes less problems.

Alternatively, the Shin Megami Tensei series uses Law/Neutrality/Chaos straight. It works well within that setting, but one would have to be careful with it; it only works because of the apocalyptic factions of those games.

Ok a little change of topic. Alignment systems, character traits/flaws/nature, etc are essentially just ways to try to wrangle players into playing their [characters] in a certain fashion. Is making rules to attempt to keep player actions in any line at all even doable? Is it worth doing? Would it be better to just let different groups come with a gentleman's agreement to keep character actions consistent?

I think it should go without saying that alignment should be a result of player actions, not a limit for player actions.

Alignment shouldn't exist separate from patron deity, or the deity system in general; otherwise, the entirely separate moral compass of alignment needs some kind of reconciliation with the gods that ostensibly carry those torches.

If there's three LG gods with entirely different MOs, then alignment probably shouldn't mean much.

mean_liar wrote:Alignment shouldn't exist separate from patron deity, or the deity system in general; otherwise, the entirely separate moral compass of alignment needs some kind of reconciliation with the gods that ostensibly carry those torches.

If there's three LG gods with entirely different MOs, then alignment probably shouldn't mean much.

So, basically alignment is a planar trait? That would help make positive/negative energy make sense too.

mean_liar wrote:Alignment shouldn't exist separate from patron deity, or the deity system in general; otherwise, the entirely separate moral compass of alignment needs some kind of reconciliation with the gods that ostensibly carry those torches.

If there's three LG gods with entirely different MOs, then alignment probably shouldn't mean much.

I can get behind that. Tying alignment to gods gives you an unchanging set of behaviors and traits (those of the god) to point to when the alignment of a certain action is unclear, rather than the current system of warring interpretations of meaning.