House Ruled Alignment [Archive] - Wizards Community

House Ruled Alignment [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Talivar
03-26-07, 01:33 AM I'm just curious about other DM's attempts at implementing their own rules and ideas on Alignment. As of right now my only rule is that no player can make their character/s have a true neutral alignment. Only Gods can be truly neutral in my campaign. I have never liked the idea of a character being neutral.

But a friend let me borrow the Rifts rule book published by Palladium. I won't post the alignment system because I am not sure how WOTC would look at posting copyrighted material from another company even if it is just a small part of the total book. But wow, just wow. I absolutely love their alignment system. So here is my quesitons.

Has anyone tried adopting alignment rules from other rpgs? If so, how did it work out? My house rule on alignment, no true neutral, is not very drastic or game changing but has anyone made a drastic change to the system? If so, what was your change and how did it work out?

Those aren't the only things I would like to read, so if you have anything else you want to add to this, don't be shy, post post post away.
JulesCARV
03-26-07, 03:14 AM One idea for alignment that I came up with is obligation ratings (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=692478): basically, a way of making alignment more colorful and detailed

Regarding your idea, I'd say it makes more sense to eliminate all neutral or mixed alignments, and leave only good, chaos, evil, and law, or only LG, CG, LE, and CE as existing alignments than to leave every alignment except TN unchanged but bar TN. If you got rid of all "neutral" of "mixed" alignments, then it's clear -- you may be close to the middle, but you aren't exactly there, so you fall into one of the four sides of the intersection point. If you keep everything but TN though... that seems weird: if an NE person is neutral with respect to law and chaos, and an an LN person is neutral with respect to good and evil, what's to stop someone from being like an LN person with respect to good and evil and like an NE person with respect to law and chaos? There's a sort of mysterious "donut hole" in alignment if you bar true neutral without changing anything else.
Kineon_War
03-26-07, 10:48 AM I actually dislike the entire alignment system.
I would love to get rid of it completely but what to replace it with (if anything)?
Honour? Reputation? Character descriptions? Allegiences?
The list goes on...
Talivar
03-26-07, 05:23 PM Ecellent point JulesCARV. Trust me, I would love to eliminate neutral all together. But as of right now, I have no way of representing a more middle of the road view point for my players. Which is why I really dig the idea of alignments in the Rifts world. As far as eliminating TN, in my expirence players just have a helluva time pulling it off. It's just, i hate using the word unrealistic especially when we are talking about a fantasy rpg with magic and monsters, for lack of a better word unrealistic for a person to be truly middle of the road on alignment. Animals and Gods I can see, just not intelligent races/monsters. Just my opinion, and since my campaign in my sandbox... :P /jk bud.

Now if neutral was eliminated in all aspects of alignment and replaced with something else, I would be all for it. But then how would it be implimented? Maybe varying degrees of lawful chaotic good evil? Extreme Lawful/Slight Evil? See what I mean? That would be a pain and open to interpretation by the DM. And could easily be interprated wrongly.

Kineon War, I feel ya. If you happen to stumble on a good alternative to alignment, post it. Hell, any ideas you have post them too even if they are off the wall because between you and ever other person on these boards, I'm sure yall's overly creative asses can come up with a usable alternative.

In the end, I may run a few low level adventures with the Rifts alignment system just to see how good/bad it fits with DnD's mechanics.
Patera_Quetzal
03-26-07, 06:22 PM Kineon War, I feel ya. If you happen to stumble on a good alternative to alignment, post it. Hell, any ideas you have post them too even if they are off the wall because between you and ever other person on these boards, I'm sure yall's overly creative asses can come up with a usable alternative.

What exactly is the mechanical role of alignment in your D&D game? (I’ve never played in a game that used alignment.)
Glak
03-28-07, 07:32 PM In 2nd edition the Neutral and Chaotic Neutral alighments were forms of insanity and all of the neutral alighments were essentially evil. In 3e Neutral is a perfectly reasonable alignment. If I were to estimate how many people should be of each alighment I would assume that 1/4 were good, 1/2 neutral, and 1/4 evil. Likewise 1/4 lawful, 1/2 neutral, and 1/4 chaotic. Assuming no correlation between alignment axis we get 1/16 each of LG, CG, LE, CE, 1/8 each of NG, CN, NE, and LN. That leaves 1/4 for NN. So 25% would be neutral. I chose 1/4 1/2 and 1/4 for the breakdown because that is a row on Pascal's Triangle which is essentially a bell curve (normal distribution)
JulesCARV
03-28-07, 08:25 PM In 2nd edition the Neutral and Chaotic Neutral alighments were forms of insanity and all of the neutral alighments were essentially evil. In 3e Neutral is a perfectly reasonable alignment. If I were to estimate how many people should be of each alighment I would assume that 1/4 were good, 1/2 neutral, and 1/4 evil. Likewise 1/4 lawful, 1/2 neutral, and 1/4 chaotic. Assuming no correlation between alignment axis we get 1/16 each of LG, CG, LE, CE, 1/8 each of NG, CN, NE, and LN. That leaves 1/4 for NN. So 25% would be neutral. I chose 1/4 1/2 and 1/4 for the breakdown because that is a row on Pascal's Triangle which is essentially a bell curve (normal distribution)

Wow. That's exactly the approach I use too, at least for humans. (not sure about the distribution for elves, orcs, etc.)
dauvis
03-29-07, 11:20 PM I had been kicking around the idea of bringing the d20 Modern allegiance system in D&D. I was thinking that there would be allegiances for chaos, law, good, evil. To be a paladin, one would have to have allegiances to law and good. Clerics would have to take an allegience to their god.

Has anyone had any luck doing this?
Khementari
03-29-07, 11:33 PM I had been kicking around the idea of bringing the d20 Modern allegiance system in D&D. I was thinking that there would be allegiances for chaos, law, good, evil. To be a paladin, one would have to have allegiances to law and good. Clerics would have to take an allegience to their god.

Has anyone had any luck doing this?

Yes. The only real problem I find are the alignment based spells. In my own game I run setting specific spells so allegiance makes for a much more interesting game.

A friend of mine is less drastic and decided that alignments and related spells are only valid for creatures/beings of power, i.e. from another plane or supernatural. Pit fiend is [Lawful Evil], Jimmy the thief and murderer is one nasty fella, but he is human and does not personify an alignment.
Rhialto
03-31-07, 09:16 AM You coudl replace all those "(verb) (alignment)" spells with a whole host of "(verb) (allegiance)" spells instead.

Hmm...

- Sword +1, +3 vs Nyrond loyalists
- Detect tree-huggers (level 1 wizard spell)

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Talivar 03-26-07, 01:33 AM	I'm just curious about other DM's attempts at implementing their own rules and ideas on Alignment. As of right now my only rule is that no player can make their character/s have a true neutral alignment. Only Gods can be truly neutral in my campaign. I have never liked the idea of a character being neutral. But a friend let me borrow the Rifts rule book published by Palladium. I won't post the alignment system because I am not sure how WOTC would look at posting copyrighted material from another company even if it is just a small part of the total book. But wow, just wow. I absolutely love their alignment system. So here is my quesitons. Has anyone tried adopting alignment rules from other rpgs? If so, how did it work out? My house rule on alignment, no true neutral, is not very drastic or game changing but has anyone made a drastic change to the system? If so, what was your change and how did it work out? Those aren't the only things I would like to read, so if you have anything else you want to add to this, don't be shy, post post post away.
JulesCARV 03-26-07, 03:14 AM	One idea for alignment that I came up with is obligation ratings (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=692478): basically, a way of making alignment more colorful and detailed Regarding your idea, I'd say it makes more sense to eliminate all neutral or mixed alignments, and leave only good, chaos, evil, and law, or only LG, CG, LE, and CE as existing alignments than to leave every alignment except TN unchanged but bar TN. If you got rid of all "neutral" of "mixed" alignments, then it's clear -- you may be close to the middle, but you aren't exactly there, so you fall into one of the four sides of the intersection point. If you keep everything but TN though... that seems weird: if an NE person is neutral with respect to law and chaos, and an an LN person is neutral with respect to good and evil, what's to stop someone from being like an LN person with respect to good and evil and like an NE person with respect to law and chaos? There's a sort of mysterious "donut hole" in alignment if you bar true neutral without changing anything else.
Kineon_War 03-26-07, 10:48 AM	I actually dislike the entire alignment system. I would love to get rid of it completely but what to replace it with (if anything)? Honour? Reputation? Character descriptions? Allegiences? The list goes on...
Talivar 03-26-07, 05:23 PM	Ecellent point JulesCARV. Trust me, I would love to eliminate neutral all together. But as of right now, I have no way of representing a more middle of the road view point for my players. Which is why I really dig the idea of alignments in the Rifts world. As far as eliminating TN, in my expirence players just have a helluva time pulling it off. It's just, i hate using the word unrealistic especially when we are talking about a fantasy rpg with magic and monsters, for lack of a better word unrealistic for a person to be truly middle of the road on alignment. Animals and Gods I can see, just not intelligent races/monsters. Just my opinion, and since my campaign in my sandbox... :P /jk bud. Now if neutral was eliminated in all aspects of alignment and replaced with something else, I would be all for it. But then how would it be implimented? Maybe varying degrees of lawful chaotic good evil? Extreme Lawful/Slight Evil? See what I mean? That would be a pain and open to interpretation by the DM. And could easily be interprated wrongly. Kineon War, I feel ya. If you happen to stumble on a good alternative to alignment, post it. Hell, any ideas you have post them too even if they are off the wall because between you and ever other person on these boards, I'm sure yall's overly creative asses can come up with a usable alternative. In the end, I may run a few low level adventures with the Rifts alignment system just to see how good/bad it fits with DnD's mechanics.
Patera_Quetzal 03-26-07, 06:22 PM	Kineon War, I feel ya. If you happen to stumble on a good alternative to alignment, post it. Hell, any ideas you have post them too even if they are off the wall because between you and ever other person on these boards, I'm sure yall's overly creative asses can come up with a usable alternative. What exactly is the mechanical role of alignment in your D&D game? (I’ve never played in a game that used alignment.)
Glak 03-28-07, 07:32 PM	In 2nd edition the Neutral and Chaotic Neutral alighments were forms of insanity and all of the neutral alighments were essentially evil. In 3e Neutral is a perfectly reasonable alignment. If I were to estimate how many people should be of each alighment I would assume that 1/4 were good, 1/2 neutral, and 1/4 evil. Likewise 1/4 lawful, 1/2 neutral, and 1/4 chaotic. Assuming no correlation between alignment axis we get 1/16 each of LG, CG, LE, CE, 1/8 each of NG, CN, NE, and LN. That leaves 1/4 for NN. So 25% would be neutral. I chose 1/4 1/2 and 1/4 for the breakdown because that is a row on Pascal's Triangle which is essentially a bell curve (normal distribution)
JulesCARV 03-28-07, 08:25 PM	In 2nd edition the Neutral and Chaotic Neutral alighments were forms of insanity and all of the neutral alighments were essentially evil. In 3e Neutral is a perfectly reasonable alignment. If I were to estimate how many people should be of each alighment I would assume that 1/4 were good, 1/2 neutral, and 1/4 evil. Likewise 1/4 lawful, 1/2 neutral, and 1/4 chaotic. Assuming no correlation between alignment axis we get 1/16 each of LG, CG, LE, CE, 1/8 each of NG, CN, NE, and LN. That leaves 1/4 for NN. So 25% would be neutral. I chose 1/4 1/2 and 1/4 for the breakdown because that is a row on Pascal's Triangle which is essentially a bell curve (normal distribution) Wow. That's exactly the approach I use too, at least for humans. (not sure about the distribution for elves, orcs, etc.)
dauvis 03-29-07, 11:20 PM	I had been kicking around the idea of bringing the d20 Modern allegiance system in D&D. I was thinking that there would be allegiances for chaos, law, good, evil. To be a paladin, one would have to have allegiances to law and good. Clerics would have to take an allegience to their god. Has anyone had any luck doing this?
Khementari 03-29-07, 11:33 PM	I had been kicking around the idea of bringing the d20 Modern allegiance system in D&D. I was thinking that there would be allegiances for chaos, law, good, evil. To be a paladin, one would have to have allegiances to law and good. Clerics would have to take an allegience to their god. Has anyone had any luck doing this? Yes. The only real problem I find are the alignment based spells. In my own game I run setting specific spells so allegiance makes for a much more interesting game. A friend of mine is less drastic and decided that alignments and related spells are only valid for creatures/beings of power, i.e. from another plane or supernatural. Pit fiend is [Lawful Evil], Jimmy the thief and murderer is one nasty fella, but he is human and does not personify an alignment.
Rhialto 03-31-07, 09:16 AM	You coudl replace all those "(verb) (alignment)" spells with a whole host of "(verb) (allegiance)" spells instead. Hmm... - Sword +1, +3 vs Nyrond loyalists - Detect tree-huggers (level 1 wizard spell)