HR: Alternate alignment system [Archive] - Wizards Community

HR: Alternate alignment system [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Magius
09-20-04, 01:18 AM I never liked the d&d alignment system. One of the few things that hasn't changed a bit sinced 1st edition, it's not only vague and misrepresentative, but also prevents players from making interesting, complex character personalities.
Any of you that have read the "subjective evil" mini-variant (it gives ideas, but no real mechanics) in Monte Cook's book of vile darkness will know what I mean. I'd like to build on that to create a full-fledged alignment system from the ground up.

I have an idea for one, but as it's not that great I'd like to hear others first. This is about an alignment system, not my alignment system.
Mac Awol
09-20-04, 04:36 AM Take a look in D20 Modern and read the Allegiances section it could give you some ideas, cause it almost, but not quiet remove the Alignment concept.

Thou by removing that you start tampering with something that is very much an intergrated part of D&D, but that is a bump easily overcome, by the Fact that all Allegiances objectively lies somewhere on the LAW-CHAOS/GOOD-EVIL axis.

And that part of D20 Modern is SRD, so....
edsonaoki
09-20-04, 08:39 AM Hmm what do you mean by "alignment mechanics"? At least I see alignments as role-playing only tools.. .with exception of some magical effects and like.
bg2soatob
09-20-04, 10:25 AM The orgiginal post was mine. A little mix-up involving two users using the same computer. You'll notice in the signature of Magius that I'm mentioned.
Take a look in D20 Modern... I'm afraid I don't have access to any non-d&d books, nor do I have the intention to purchase them. If it's available online somewhere, then could I have the link? Otherwise, perhaps you could just post the rules, or the basic elements of it.

Hmm what do you mean by "alignment mechanics"? At least I see alignments as role-playing only tools.. .with exception of some magical effects and like. Anything from detect evil to holy smite requires knowledge of the target's alignment. Also, the fact that personalities must conform to the alignment axese will often prevent players from coming up with complex personalities (hmm, let's see. My Paladin is Lawful Good, so he's honorable, only does good, is merciful, generous, never breaks his word, and doesn't act recklessly. Anything else?).
Mac Awol
09-20-04, 11:57 AM I'm afraid I don't have access to any non-d&d books, nor do I have the intention to purchase them. If it's available online somewhere, then could I have the link? Otherwise, perhaps you could just post the rules, or the basic elements of it.
I have the link right here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/msrd).

:rolleyes:
Illithidbix
09-20-04, 07:45 PM Well I strongly dislike alignment, it’s actually the only RPG mechanic I’ve had a really serious problem with, because in my opinion it impairs role-playing and character development by pigeonholing a characters personality and beliefs in very unrelated subjects., yes I know it’s meant to be a tool, not a straight jacket but unfortunately it’s rather imbedded into a lot of spell effects and class restrictions.
Every other RPG manages just fine without alignment, it’s simply not needed.

I think the first step is to ask what you actually want the Alignment system to do, and do you actually need a system mechanic to do it, or is it really just a part of role-playing the background, beliefs and personality of the character?

If it’s as a guideline and tool, then I would simply drop it, a brief, personalised summary of the character’s history, beliefs and personality is far better guideline than a choice from one of 9 very sweeping and incoherent “philosophical” views. It’s far more rewarding to create a personalised character rather than using a pre-set belief system.

As an allegiance system for certain countries/political powers etc, this is really just character background, I see no reason why you should go out of your way to make a system mechanic for it.

For a more cosmic system, dealing with Gods, Planes and Outsiders, I would perhaps have it only apply between opposition forces, and perhaps make the oppositions a bit more rigidly defined than just “Good vs Evil”.

For most mortals, I would see it as pretty much irrelevant, some people have a tendency towards benevolent or malevolent acts, some follow their beliefs to a fanatical and extreme level, but for you can only determine the disposition of their personality by actually reading their mind. Detect/Protection from/smite alignment spells just don’t work on them.

For Spell effects, I would replace religious types with “detect infidel” type spells (rather than “detect evil”), which detect followers, clerics and Outsiders that oppose your God/Ideals. Here I would perhaps also restrict it to the archenermies of your God. Maybe a form of “Detect Hostile/Malicious intent” for Wizards and Bards. There’s a psionic power that does exactly that, and it can be very easily converted into a spell: http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/v35/PsionicPowersD-F.rtf The same principle could apply to “Protection from…” type spells as well.

(You may wish to adjust the Paladin’s powers to compensate, in a game I’m currently in we have a player playing a Paladin in an alignmentless game without detect evil, however to compensate she has been given the passive ability to detect malicious intent, ablit a second or so before it actually happens… just enough time to draw her sword and throw herself in front of the Elf Wizard she’s sworn to protect.)
jagggar
09-20-04, 08:47 PM Dragon 323 has an article "See No Evil" which details four spells, detect attitude, detect guilt, detect heresy, and detect violence, which are to be used in place of detect evil.
RealMad
09-21-04, 07:17 AM The thing about playing without alignment is that, while it sounds very good talking about it, it's awkward in practice.

I don't really find that players, given leeway in alignment, use it to create interesting, complex characters. Usually, they just use it as an excuse for a paladin to off someone, or maybe to stash away a treasure.

Also, many players, when not given ideals to play to, become erratic in their behavior (this is particularly true of newbies). It's like they have no template to base their roleplaying on.

Anyway, when I DM, I always inject elements of alignment conflict in my scenarios and I think it works well. I recently did an adventure where the party needed to take away a rare resource from one town in order to save another. One town owned it, so by law they should have it, the other town needed it, so for good's sake they should be given it.

If there were no alignment ideals, then what sense would there be to kill the town that owned it (an evil act) and then give it to the needy town (a good act)? Or whatever other end you might think of if alignment were not in play.

My players enjoyed that one a lot precisely because they had to wrestle with alignment. If there were no alignment system, then resolution would be simple. With an alignment system, it becomes complex.
Illithidbix
09-21-04, 09:13 PM I really don't understand why people think that removing alignment removes all moral elements from the game, I find quite the opposite, that alignment means you don’t need to bother to think about your character’s belief system, and what they think is right and wrong, and just follow the stereotype.

They way you say it RealMad, most Newbies I’ve met seem to handle being introduced to alignmentless RPGing just fine, but then I can see your point with younger player. You also make it sound like you have to use Alignment as a method of controlling the players actions by enforcing a character’s moral judgement, rather than leaving that to the players.

Then again, I do degree level philosophy (well Physics with Philosophy to be percise), as do quite a few other members of the group I play in, and the rest are deep thinking types as anyway. Which may be a reason why I find the alignment system very inconsistent, and flawed. One of my DM's who has removed alignment mentions the contrast between his old players, and the ones he's got at university.

A player creating Paladin types for example, should make up a personal code of conduct for their character, and for them to suffer penalties if they fail to adhere to the code they themselves set, simarley there should be specific ethos for a member of a religion and similar.

Providing the DM is willing to ask "Why did your character do that?" rather than say "Thats against your character's alignment" then I see no problem with keeping a lid on amorality in the game.
Gilgiga of the Hunt
09-21-04, 09:28 PM Alginment is merly a guideline. My plaers have figgured that out farily fast. It just takes some time, with lots more empasis on roleplaying then combat.
After just a couple really good conflicts (Justice or Mercy? Save the Goblin Villiage?) Alginment got thrown out of the window.
It takes awhile but eventualy players should learn to understand it's a guideline nothing more, nothing less.
Feel free to gray the lines in their face. A fiend doing good for altertier motives, a pally unknowingly doing evil, evil clerics of Palor, etc. Once the players no longer are able to trust DetectX they start acting more like pople and try to figure out people first. Soon their charcters folow sute.
TaliaWinters
09-22-04, 12:13 PM In the Neverwinter Nights (a D&D game) you choose your aligment.
And after this it is represented in points (0-100)
so if you are neutral it is good(50) evil(50) or similar (don't know how it worked exactly)

some do's and don'ts you get points improvement for good or evil.
bg2soatob
09-22-04, 01:59 PM In the Neverwinter Nights (a D&D game) you choose your aligment.
And after this it is represented in points (0-100)
so if you are neutral it is good(50) evil(50) or similar (don't know how it worked exactly)

some do's and don'ts you get points improvement for good or evil. That's where the problem lies. It's impossible to decide whether something is good or evil. Is slaughtering an evil prisoner an evil deed (rhetorical. I don't want to start a death penalty debate thread)? How about stealing from an innocent man, but sharing the loot with the poor? The objective alignment forces a black-and-white game on the PCs.

Here's my idea for a system, similar to although not based on the alleigance system:
It revolves around the concept of motivations. A motivation is more than an ambition or a goal for a character, it is what he wakes up for in the morning, the very ideal he stands for. While a goal might be "end world hunger" (a very ambitious one), a motivation would be "help the hungry".
A character can have one, two, or in rare cases three motivations, as well as optionally having 'hated' motivations. In addition, gods have their own motivations. Any divine spell cast uses the god's motivations and not the casters.
A few basic examples of motivations: Greed (getting money), compassion (helping the weak), duty (doing something for someone else. Patriotism is a good example of this), Happiness/fun (the steriotypical Chaotic-Neutral), power (self-explanatory), none (just a guy who lives from day to day, doing what seems right at the time).

Drizzt Do'Urden would have compassion and redemption as motivations, and would hate greed and power.
Heronious would have compassion and glory as motivations, and would hate power and pure evil (the motivation of outsiders with the evil subtype).
Erythnul would have bloodlust as his motivation.
Nerull would have no specific motivation, but those who killed many innocents will come up as good, while protectors will come up evil.
Obad-hi would have no motivation, but would hate any who desecrate nature.
The last two were examples of building characters outside even the motivations' thin prison.

When casting detect/smite/protection from evil/good, you check whether you're on their hated motivations, or they're on yours. Also, sometimes they won't have the exact hated motivation, but will be affiliated with it. For instance, Heronious hates Erythnul, because bloodlust is affiliated with pure evil. It requires some judgement on the DM's side, but less judgement than deciding whether something is objectively good or evil.

Opinions?
bg2soatob
09-27-04, 10:52 AM Anyone? :bump:
Goken100
09-27-04, 03:18 PM It sounds like a fun system to me. I would certainly institute that in my game if I wasn't already pulling so many rugs out from under my players. :D I'm gonna play with the "alignment as guidelines" optional rule, so that no magic effects are based on alignment. That way the players can still still choose alignments and let it steer them in a direction.

In any case, I would vote for for any of these proposed systems, with one comment. The more standardized the better. If you spell out exactly what the players' options are for aligning for and against things, this will make the package more attractive and easy to swallow.
Kedrann
09-29-04, 12:34 PM Well, I used a similar system in a campaign of mine. Characters personalities had a rough definition based around three questions :

A) What do you respect ?
B) What would you fight for ?
C) What do you hate ?

The answers were of course supposed to be general concepts such as freedom, slavery, etc. So you could replace alignement requisite from most prestige classes with motivations.

In order to use the "alignment magic", I modified the four components. Order was seen as the force of Stasis, that allows things to stay as they are, Chaos as the force of Change, both without any moral connotation. I replaced Good and Evil with Light and Darkness, which you could also call Positive and Negative energy, Life and Death, Yang and Yin. As life can be a blessing or a curse and death a good or a bad thing, they had no more moral value.

So the Paladine became the Champion of Light, linked to the churches of the Gods of Light, but not necessarily a good guy. Idem for the Blackguard, champion of Darkness.
TaliaWinters
09-30-04, 09:29 AM After all, I think now, that you can handle everything with the 9 basic aligments, and there is nothing missing.

>How about stealing from an innocent man, but sharing the loot with the
>poor?
It depends on why you're sharing it with the poor. If you're like Robin Hood, your CG. But if you share because of you feel to, you're just N. If you steal sometimes from those people you're now sharing the loot, you are CN.
If you kill the one you are stealing from you're Evil, NE.

so, next point, why you're stealing from an innocent man... ?
cthulu_mt
09-30-04, 09:56 AM Sorry if this isn't very helpful to the discussion....

Good - Evil and Law - Chaos are two dimensional; the X and Y axes of a graph, maybe adding a Z axis would fix the problem. I'm not sure what this theorhetical third component would be. Maybe the traditional two would be the character intent and the Z axis would be the measure of their results. i.e. Kurg the Orc is LG but because he is dumb as a brick everything good he tries to do ends up hurting people.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Magius 09-20-04, 01:18 AM	I never liked the d&d alignment system. One of the few things that hasn't changed a bit sinced 1st edition, it's not only vague and misrepresentative, but also prevents players from making interesting, complex character personalities. Any of you that have read the "subjective evil" mini-variant (it gives ideas, but no real mechanics) in Monte Cook's book of vile darkness will know what I mean. I'd like to build on that to create a full-fledged alignment system from the ground up. I have an idea for one, but as it's not that great I'd like to hear others first. This is about an alignment system, not my alignment system.
Mac Awol 09-20-04, 04:36 AM	Take a look in D20 Modern and read the Allegiances section it could give you some ideas, cause it almost, but not quiet remove the Alignment concept. Thou by removing that you start tampering with something that is very much an intergrated part of D&D, but that is a bump easily overcome, by the Fact that all Allegiances objectively lies somewhere on the LAW-CHAOS/GOOD-EVIL axis. And that part of D20 Modern is SRD, so....
edsonaoki 09-20-04, 08:39 AM	Hmm what do you mean by "alignment mechanics"? At least I see alignments as role-playing only tools.. .with exception of some magical effects and like.
bg2soatob 09-20-04, 10:25 AM	The orgiginal post was mine. A little mix-up involving two users using the same computer. You'll notice in the signature of Magius that I'm mentioned. Take a look in D20 Modern... I'm afraid I don't have access to any non-d&d books, nor do I have the intention to purchase them. If it's available online somewhere, then could I have the link? Otherwise, perhaps you could just post the rules, or the basic elements of it. Hmm what do you mean by "alignment mechanics"? At least I see alignments as role-playing only tools.. .with exception of some magical effects and like. Anything from detect evil to holy smite requires knowledge of the target's alignment. Also, the fact that personalities must conform to the alignment axese will often prevent players from coming up with complex personalities (hmm, let's see. My Paladin is Lawful Good, so he's honorable, only does good, is merciful, generous, never breaks his word, and doesn't act recklessly. Anything else?).
Mac Awol 09-20-04, 11:57 AM	I'm afraid I don't have access to any non-d&d books, nor do I have the intention to purchase them. If it's available online somewhere, then could I have the link? Otherwise, perhaps you could just post the rules, or the basic elements of it. I have the link right here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/msrd). :rolleyes:
Illithidbix 09-20-04, 07:45 PM	Well I strongly dislike alignment, it’s actually the only RPG mechanic I’ve had a really serious problem with, because in my opinion it impairs role-playing and character development by pigeonholing a characters personality and beliefs in very unrelated subjects., yes I know it’s meant to be a tool, not a straight jacket but unfortunately it’s rather imbedded into a lot of spell effects and class restrictions. Every other RPG manages just fine without alignment, it’s simply not needed. I think the first step is to ask what you actually want the Alignment system to do, and do you actually need a system mechanic to do it, or is it really just a part of role-playing the background, beliefs and personality of the character? If it’s as a guideline and tool, then I would simply drop it, a brief, personalised summary of the character’s history, beliefs and personality is far better guideline than a choice from one of 9 very sweeping and incoherent “philosophical” views. It’s far more rewarding to create a personalised character rather than using a pre-set belief system. As an allegiance system for certain countries/political powers etc, this is really just character background, I see no reason why you should go out of your way to make a system mechanic for it. For a more cosmic system, dealing with Gods, Planes and Outsiders, I would perhaps have it only apply between opposition forces, and perhaps make the oppositions a bit more rigidly defined than just “Good vs Evil”. For most mortals, I would see it as pretty much irrelevant, some people have a tendency towards benevolent or malevolent acts, some follow their beliefs to a fanatical and extreme level, but for you can only determine the disposition of their personality by actually reading their mind. Detect/Protection from/smite alignment spells just don’t work on them. For Spell effects, I would replace religious types with “detect infidel” type spells (rather than “detect evil”), which detect followers, clerics and Outsiders that oppose your God/Ideals. Here I would perhaps also restrict it to the archenermies of your God. Maybe a form of “Detect Hostile/Malicious intent” for Wizards and Bards. There’s a psionic power that does exactly that, and it can be very easily converted into a spell: http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/v35/PsionicPowersD-F.rtf The same principle could apply to “Protection from…” type spells as well. (You may wish to adjust the Paladin’s powers to compensate, in a game I’m currently in we have a player playing a Paladin in an alignmentless game without detect evil, however to compensate she has been given the passive ability to detect malicious intent, ablit a second or so before it actually happens… just enough time to draw her sword and throw herself in front of the Elf Wizard she’s sworn to protect.)
jagggar 09-20-04, 08:47 PM	Dragon 323 has an article "See No Evil" which details four spells, detect attitude, detect guilt, detect heresy, and detect violence, which are to be used in place of detect evil.
RealMad 09-21-04, 07:17 AM	The thing about playing without alignment is that, while it sounds very good talking about it, it's awkward in practice. I don't really find that players, given leeway in alignment, use it to create interesting, complex characters. Usually, they just use it as an excuse for a paladin to off someone, or maybe to stash away a treasure. Also, many players, when not given ideals to play to, become erratic in their behavior (this is particularly true of newbies). It's like they have no template to base their roleplaying on. Anyway, when I DM, I always inject elements of alignment conflict in my scenarios and I think it works well. I recently did an adventure where the party needed to take away a rare resource from one town in order to save another. One town owned it, so by law they should have it, the other town needed it, so for good's sake they should be given it. If there were no alignment ideals, then what sense would there be to kill the town that owned it (an evil act) and then give it to the needy town (a good act)? Or whatever other end you might think of if alignment were not in play. My players enjoyed that one a lot precisely because they had to wrestle with alignment. If there were no alignment system, then resolution would be simple. With an alignment system, it becomes complex.
Illithidbix 09-21-04, 09:13 PM	I really don't understand why people think that removing alignment removes all moral elements from the game, I find quite the opposite, that alignment means you don’t need to bother to think about your character’s belief system, and what they think is right and wrong, and just follow the stereotype. They way you say it RealMad, most Newbies I’ve met seem to handle being introduced to alignmentless RPGing just fine, but then I can see your point with younger player. You also make it sound like you have to use Alignment as a method of controlling the players actions by enforcing a character’s moral judgement, rather than leaving that to the players. Then again, I do degree level philosophy (well Physics with Philosophy to be percise), as do quite a few other members of the group I play in, and the rest are deep thinking types as anyway. Which may be a reason why I find the alignment system very inconsistent, and flawed. One of my DM's who has removed alignment mentions the contrast between his old players, and the ones he's got at university. A player creating Paladin types for example, should make up a personal code of conduct for their character, and for them to suffer penalties if they fail to adhere to the code they themselves set, simarley there should be specific ethos for a member of a religion and similar. Providing the DM is willing to ask "Why did your character do that?" rather than say "Thats against your character's alignment" then I see no problem with keeping a lid on amorality in the game.
Gilgiga of the Hunt 09-21-04, 09:28 PM	Alginment is merly a guideline. My plaers have figgured that out farily fast. It just takes some time, with lots more empasis on roleplaying then combat. After just a couple really good conflicts (Justice or Mercy? Save the Goblin Villiage?) Alginment got thrown out of the window. It takes awhile but eventualy players should learn to understand it's a guideline nothing more, nothing less. Feel free to gray the lines in their face. A fiend doing good for altertier motives, a pally unknowingly doing evil, evil clerics of Palor, etc. Once the players no longer are able to trust DetectX they start acting more like pople and try to figure out people first. Soon their charcters folow sute.
TaliaWinters 09-22-04, 12:13 PM	In the Neverwinter Nights (a D&D game) you choose your aligment. And after this it is represented in points (0-100) so if you are neutral it is good(50) evil(50) or similar (don't know how it worked exactly) some do's and don'ts you get points improvement for good or evil.
bg2soatob 09-22-04, 01:59 PM	In the Neverwinter Nights (a D&D game) you choose your aligment. And after this it is represented in points (0-100) so if you are neutral it is good(50) evil(50) or similar (don't know how it worked exactly) some do's and don'ts you get points improvement for good or evil. That's where the problem lies. It's impossible to decide whether something is good or evil. Is slaughtering an evil prisoner an evil deed (rhetorical. I don't want to start a death penalty debate thread)? How about stealing from an innocent man, but sharing the loot with the poor? The objective alignment forces a black-and-white game on the PCs. Here's my idea for a system, similar to although not based on the alleigance system: It revolves around the concept of motivations. A motivation is more than an ambition or a goal for a character, it is what he wakes up for in the morning, the very ideal he stands for. While a goal might be "end world hunger" (a very ambitious one), a motivation would be "help the hungry". A character can have one, two, or in rare cases three motivations, as well as optionally having 'hated' motivations. In addition, gods have their own motivations. Any divine spell cast uses the god's motivations and not the casters. A few basic examples of motivations: Greed (getting money), compassion (helping the weak), duty (doing something for someone else. Patriotism is a good example of this), Happiness/fun (the steriotypical Chaotic-Neutral), power (self-explanatory), none (just a guy who lives from day to day, doing what seems right at the time). Drizzt Do'Urden would have compassion and redemption as motivations, and would hate greed and power. Heronious would have compassion and glory as motivations, and would hate power and pure evil (the motivation of outsiders with the evil subtype). Erythnul would have bloodlust as his motivation. Nerull would have no specific motivation, but those who killed many innocents will come up as good, while protectors will come up evil. Obad-hi would have no motivation, but would hate any who desecrate nature. The last two were examples of building characters outside even the motivations' thin prison. When casting detect/smite/protection from evil/good, you check whether you're on their hated motivations, or they're on yours. Also, sometimes they won't have the exact hated motivation, but will be affiliated with it. For instance, Heronious hates Erythnul, because bloodlust is affiliated with pure evil. It requires some judgement on the DM's side, but less judgement than deciding whether something is objectively good or evil. Opinions?
bg2soatob 09-27-04, 10:52 AM	Anyone? :bump:
Goken100 09-27-04, 03:18 PM	It sounds like a fun system to me. I would certainly institute that in my game if I wasn't already pulling so many rugs out from under my players. :D I'm gonna play with the "alignment as guidelines" optional rule, so that no magic effects are based on alignment. That way the players can still still choose alignments and let it steer them in a direction. In any case, I would vote for for any of these proposed systems, with one comment. The more standardized the better. If you spell out exactly what the players' options are for aligning for and against things, this will make the package more attractive and easy to swallow.
Kedrann 09-29-04, 12:34 PM	Well, I used a similar system in a campaign of mine. Characters personalities had a rough definition based around three questions : A) What do you respect ? B) What would you fight for ? C) What do you hate ? The answers were of course supposed to be general concepts such as freedom, slavery, etc. So you could replace alignement requisite from most prestige classes with motivations. In order to use the "alignment magic", I modified the four components. Order was seen as the force of Stasis, that allows things to stay as they are, Chaos as the force of Change, both without any moral connotation. I replaced Good and Evil with Light and Darkness, which you could also call Positive and Negative energy, Life and Death, Yang and Yin. As life can be a blessing or a curse and death a good or a bad thing, they had no more moral value. So the Paladine became the Champion of Light, linked to the churches of the Gods of Light, but not necessarily a good guy. Idem for the Blackguard, champion of Darkness.
TaliaWinters 09-30-04, 09:29 AM	After all, I think now, that you can handle everything with the 9 basic aligments, and there is nothing missing. >How about stealing from an innocent man, but sharing the loot with the >poor? It depends on why you're sharing it with the poor. If you're like Robin Hood, your CG. But if you share because of you feel to, you're just N. If you steal sometimes from those people you're now sharing the loot, you are CN. If you kill the one you are stealing from you're Evil, NE. so, next point, why you're stealing from an innocent man... ?
cthulu_mt 09-30-04, 09:56 AM	Sorry if this isn't very helpful to the discussion.... Good - Evil and Law - Chaos are two dimensional; the X and Y axes of a graph, maybe adding a Z axis would fix the problem. I'm not sure what this theorhetical third component would be. Maybe the traditional two would be the character intent and the Z axis would be the measure of their results. i.e. Kurg the Orc is LG but because he is dumb as a brick everything good he tries to do ends up hurting people.