The Question of Alignment

The good old alignment chart. What are your thoughts on it? Hate it with passion or love it and find it essential to the DnD/PF experience? What alignment do the characters you play usually end being? Any stories of epic falls-from-grace (oh, i miss you so, planescape) or hard-earned redemptions?

I also added poll, because it's fun to pick stuff.

I got rid of alignment in my PF1e game; I did away with it completely. We use the Allegiances system from d20 Modern. Each character names up to three allegiances, in order of devotion. Allegiances may be to a person, a country, an ideal, or a code. You could even conceivably be allied to an abstract idea, like law or chaos. It works so much better, and there are fewer arguments about "it's what my alignment dictates."

Do these have any mechanical system attached to it? Like certain abilities or feats are restricted to allegiance to a particular entity? The description reminded me of the touchstones from nWoD, though i do not remember how exactly they functioned mechanically speaking.

Hello.

I'm one of the weirdos that likes the Alignment system when there are/were mechanics to support it.

Alignment-based damage, Alignment restrictions on classes/magic items/spells, Alignment based languages if you want to go back in the Way Back, etc.

It was just another tool that could be used to tell the story.

I feel like the only time it causes problems/caused problems for me is when there's a problem player who just doesn't want consequences, or a player viewing any statement that "that's an Evil act" as a pronouncement that they as a person are evil/taking it too seriously, or a DM who abused it using it to punish a player (for bad-wrong play?) instead of as just another resource to shuffle around in the story (making too big of swings, or no going back, etc), or instead of having an effective Session Zero talk (not that Session Zeroes were a thing back when we had this kind of Alignment).

Alignment in 5E tho, for example? Useless.

While there may be legitimate arguments about the nature of evil from a philosophy standpoint? When it's a mechanic, it's a mechanic, and it has enough of a definition to it to be useable imo, and where there is gray area, that shouldn't be a problem if there's trust between player and DM, just like all the other mechanics that are an abstraction.

I've given up on 5e and recently decided to go b ack to 2e for good. I've been reading all the old books I have and I really like the alignment system.

Even if the DM doesn't pay any attention to it, I find that it helps me turn my character into a person. The fun of role play is figuring out what my character would do. And the more characters I get under my belt, the more different I want new characters to be from me. Stretching the old imagination to it's limits. I've never used the old alignment languages, I've never had a deity step in and punish a character for mis-deeds (although, that sounds fun).

In real life, I'm pure LG. And honestly, I find myself a bit boring. OK, more than a bit. Maybe that's why I role play. It's fun to walk a mile in the shoes of some CN nut case once in a while.

I think I prefer not having alignment, but instead, having a purpose for your characters so there’s a reason they’re in the same party.

What I liked about alignment was having a sort of guideline, so CG meant (to me) that I wasn’t bound by laws to do the right thing. It was helpful to me as an individual player when I was new to PbP. But it didn’t help the party, since we had lawful and evil PCs in the same party.

That’s I hated about alignment—Joe Good and Bob Evil being on the same team, and we all had to pretend like we don’t know about Bob’s secret evilness, and he knows we’re all good and that Joe would murder him if the secret got out. It never made sense to be on the same team in the first place, and it felt like disingenuous RP for good characters to not pick up heavily-telegraphed context clues. ("Bob, your breath smells like raw meat again.")

Games seem to be moving away from The Alignment Waffle, and I noticed that here on GP, some GMs were recruiting for Evil Campaigns. I think that’s the better way to play a bad guy: make it a pirate game or vampire game where the PCs are all bad, and whether the goal is to be awful or be the lesser evil (anti-hero?), at least the PCs have a reason to hang out together.


So I do think it’s essential for the GM to align the party in a cooperative game. Not like "you’re all neural good," but more like "you’re seven samurai hired to defend the village from thirty bandits."—a purpose for being in the game, but freedom to be the honorable duelist or the opportunistic trickster.

I really like alignment systems. The old TMNT RPG had a good one.

In D&D, I think really old editions had a system that was a bit too stringent. But 5E has gone too far the other way by scrapping any game impact it had.

It's my humble opinion that people think alignment is how YOUR character sees the world.

Gygax explained this in Dragon mag. The world is in Flux between Law and Chaos. Your actions reflect the INFLUENCE Law and Chaos have on your character.

Law us stability.
Chaos is progressive.

Too much of either can be bad, Not enough of either can also be bad. At low levels, this may not be relevant at all. However, once you start to change the world around you, the balance of power sways one way or another. That's when things start to get interesting. You put yourself in a spotlight and now there will be those who want to support you, AND some want to destroy you.

Just my two cents. You can run your games as you see fit. It's all good.

I find it useful as a personality trait even without mechanics. However I do like some of the old mechanics but always though it should be limited to deities and those that server them. Mages get raw power while clerics can target allies an enemies solely on the intent within their hearts.

I've seen alignment as an ideological stance, and have been for using it.

What does the character stand for? It's hard to imagine Robin Hood as being anything other than Chaotic Good. Joseph Stalin would probably be Lawful Evil. I'm only posting these examples because the way the characters perceived the world and acted on what they believed the world should be like determined their actions.

My argument for alignment comes from experience at the gaming table. People have too readily enjoyed or expected to play morally ambiguous anti-heroes, and scoffed at the idea of their PCs having principles to uphold. This is the kind of thing that fuels PCs being murder-hobos. Theft, torture, and assassination are things players have tried to justify as being completely permissible for their characters, and the whole table agreed these behaviours were perfectly reasonable. With no alignment, this becomes the norm.

As for mechanics, I seem to remember the paladins from AD&D 2e having stringent rules regarding alignment. I'm sure there are other examples, like what kinds of spells can be cast, that depend on alignment, but the mechanics are there.

Yes, I do have certain spells, feats, and abilities that are restricted to those who ally themselves with a particular company/person/country/ethos. Deities are a prime example. When a cleric devotes themselves to a given deity, they gain abilities unique to that deity. I don't use paladins, having replaced them with a class called the divine servant (still working on the name), so the loss of detect evil has no ill effect. Another example is the Sisterhood of the Steel Rose. The Sisterhood is an organization of female warriors and warrior-priests devoted to the protection of (and led by) the queen herself. Those who choose this allegiance gain access to the Steel Rose archetype.

Interestingly, this has seldom been a problem at my table. Very early in my gaming career (when I was still using alignment, naturally), it occasionally reared its ugly head (particularly when one party member was playing an assassin and took it upon himself to try to trim the party), but I've found that a good core group of players will police themselves. I'm reminded of a game that I ran at a local game store several dozen years ago.

A new player asked to join the party. Now, I interview prospective players for any red flags, but this guy was slick. He calmly answered my questions and set my mind at ease. The party allowed him to join them, and the very first night, while he was on watch, he robbed them blind. He gathered up all their magical equipment (using detect magic) and loaded it into a magical box that would instantly transport the gear to a second magical box many leagues away when the lid was closed. His accomplice, waiting at the receiving point, would then unload the receiving box for the next transport. All was going well for them until he tried to steal the barbarian's bunny slippers, thinking they were magical (they weren't; they had a permanent prestidigitation on them to stay clean and in good condition). The barbarian awoke, and the party quickly sorted out what was going on.

The group agreed not to kill them if they returned their magical items. They had the thief lead them to his accomplice. Then, the barbarian stuffed both of them into one of the boxes, and the party mage sealed the receiving box shut with magic. They then destroyed the sending box and dropped the other down the deepest well they could find. Problem solved, and I didn't have to break DM neutrality.

The two players who perpetrated the theft were understandably upset, but the entire shop gave the party a standing ovation. These two had done this to other groups as well. They were asked to leave the shop and not return.

Anyway, the takeaway is that the party, which consisted of alignments ranging from lawful good to chaotic neutral, came together to solve the problem themselves. Loyalty to one another superseded alignment.

Alignment quickly fell out of favour with GMs running WFRP 1e games as it was considered to be far too contrived when applied to a character's behaviour in the game. e.g 'My character is EVIL, so he has to do evil things.'

Instead, I decided to change its purpose and instead of assigning characters with a fixed Alignment, I chose to have the Alignment act as a monitoring system for the way the character had behaved and was being played in my game. e.g. Your character is EVIL because it has done evil things.'

I found that this approach immediately opens up a number of other extensions to the value of a character's alignment.

1. Basing Alignment on the way a character is being played allows the player to influence how their character is aligned and perceived by others and the gods.

2. Character alignment became a natural deterrent against excessive and extreme roleplay by players. e.g. 'Murder Hobos' were quickly going to be classified as Chaotic/Evil by the system.

3. Generally speaking, the players were wary of allowing their characters to become aligned with EVIL or CHAOTIC because they were not happy with the potential consequences for their character from the gods or NPCs. Such an alignment could attract unwanted reactions.

4. Managing one's character alignment even added richness to the roleplay as players sought to compensate or manipulate their character's status. For example: Moli Brandysnap, the party thief, was prone to collecting 'Evil' alignment points for stealing other people's possessions and would often compensate by acts of charity and generosity to earn 'GOOD' alignment points to compensate. It is perhaps the reason so many thieves' guilds also run soup kitchens for the poor.

5. Derived alignment is also used as a 'Psychic Beacon' in my game for deciding whether a character has the attention of the gods, and if so, which gods are taking an interest. This is a very neat way of deciding whether to allow a divine intervention during gameplay.

I have never been a fan of the aligment system. Its to simplified to reflect the complex nature of a personality.
But I also started my RPG journey in Dragonbane/Drager og dæmoner, where you chose 3-5 life priorities like "protect nature", "might makes right", "wealth", "love" and so on.

Would an evil person actually admit they are evil? Would a good person claim they are good?
"We are the good guys!" — the phrase most said as an excuse by war criminals.

Personally, I think an alignment in a rolegame is a good indicator of who you are dealing with. A callous hardliner? A bigot? A crooked (rules) lawyer? A psycho killer murder hobo? A classical magical girl? A dark magical girl? Etc. It's not really about what the character is, but it is a statement of what the player wants the character to be. It's also a red flag when people who don't know each other pick opposite alignments for no good reason other than to oppose — for example, a fleshed out LG knight with a long background and a sudden CE character who has only the alignment field filled.

I don't find alignment useful. It's too simple to fully represent nuances of personality, everyone has their own interpretation of it so it falls short as a categorization system and I rarely see it actually play a mechanical role. So for me it neither adds nor detracts anything; I don't mind it being there, but probably won't engage with it beyond vague attempts to roleplay without going against it.

...Which is probably why I tend towards Neutral and Good for my characters. Out of my seven DnD characters on this site, there are 3 TN, 2 NG and 2 CG. :D

As for myself, I used to be Lawful Good, but nowadays am probably just Neutral Good. The law hath failed me, so time to find a Chaotic Good patron and go freestyle.

I don't usually use alignment much, but what I have found useful is to offer two lists of adjectives or descriptors, one mostly self-centred and the other more unselfish. Usually I have them pick 2 from the the lists. They can choose one from each list (in which case they're "neutral" in terms of spells etc that affect good/evil, or two from one list (in which case they register as "good" or "evil"). It's worked pretty well, and also acts as a decent enough driver if a player isn't sure what to do - they look at their descriptors and usually go with an action that matches them.

I've also found that a lot of players will prefer a more nuanced character too, choosing one from each, so that they have what they consider a strength, and a weakness or failing.

It's always fun when they pick ones from the self-centred list and think of themselves as good too.

If someone forced me at gunpoint to label myself with an alignment, I would say chaotic good, but I feel that is too simple a description for me. Some days I am definitely chaotic neutral and others I am neutral good. Hell, it changes from hours to hour some days.

Using the allegiances system, my allegiances would be, in order, family, country, and good. Family comes first. I know, I'm a horrible soldier for not putting my country first but that's one reason I left the military. My country is my second priority. Finally, I try to generally do the "right thing" as defined by society.

Alignment is always an interesting conversation. Its roots are in "Three Hearts and Three Lions" by Poul Anderson, as well as the writings of Moorcock. Order and Chaos were real things, almost tangible. It makes sense that early D&D would focus on how they influence your life and how your allegiances can affect you.

Nowadays, with no real effects based on alignment, I find it serving far less purpose. It is a decent prompt, but that's about where I end it.

In games where I have to choose, I tend towards Neutrality. Chaotic Neutral is one that I resonate with, though not the wacky insane characters that the 90s and early aughts thought CN was supposed to be.