"Real" Alignments

Post/Author/DateTimePost
#1

ManicMonkey

Jun 21, 2015 1:25:13

This is from a site I found so none of this is mine and all praise goes to http://www.easydamus.com/alignmentreal.html

So the part that I liked was all of the Alignments are playable without the  Lawfull Stupid feeling honor bond to  smite the  Chaotic Crazy.

If you don't want to go to the site and read the whole page the break down is

Law / Chaos = Honorable / Independent with Neutral = Practical

Good / Evil = Humane / Determined with Neutral = Realistic

 

Again all thanks go to www.easydamus.com

Please post what you think and what homebrew stuff you might use with this.

#2

LuisCarlos17f

Jun 21, 2015 5:55:29

Good vs Evil: Justice and to respect human dignity.

 

Chaotic. Rules only for people with the same allegiance, more minarchism than anarchism 

 

In my house rules Algiment and allegiances (from d20 Modern) are together. The divine spells with aligment key can hurt enemies with same aligment but different allegiance (for example a orc shaman vs a drow cleric), or characters with opposite aligment and allegiance (for example a fanatic inquisitor would be evil aligment with good allegiance, and a unortodox cop would be chaotic aligment with law allegiance).  

#3

Cyber-Dave

Jun 21, 2015 12:53:18

I like it!

#4

FFSAA

Jun 21, 2015 16:13:20

There is no need to split the 9 combinations into 18 if you just accept that your alignment doesn't prevent you from taking actions considered outside that alignment which is explicitly stated as possible in alignment descriptions.  Even if you split into 18 you will still need to accept the character can do things outside of their alignment so it really goesn't give you anything.

 

Lawful stupid doesn't follow from the alignment system, it follows from immature players and poorly educated players who live in a society that confuses religion with morality and is likely never to take a course that even mentions ethics unless they go into engineering, law or medicine in university.  If you look at the middle east right now with sharia, ISIS, Al Quada etc. all people that consider themselves lawful good and who embody smite on sight, it's fairly encouraging there aren't more problems with people using the alignment system than there are.

#5

Macv12

Jun 21, 2015 17:45:16

It's much better than the traditional dnd alignment wheel. I have the same reaction to is that I have to pretty much every alignment wheel: pointless.

 

The thing that most stood out to me was the couple of paragraphs explaining that some characters can be motivated by values on opposite sides of the wheel, and they would have to be "neutral," or that characters will have a variety of other motivations aside from their "main" one.

 

In light if this I can't see the point in codifying motivations into a colored wheel that forces them to be adjacent to each other on a continuum, for the purpose of labeling a character as "primarily Lawful Good," then throwing away the rest of the wheel because each character's actual motivations may or may not match the tidy ordered system you've used to label them.

 

That ten-point list of values is interesting. You could definitely make something out of that. I'd toss the wheel part though. Just tell me what the character values are. I don't need to know what "nearby" values they probably hold, or of whose values they are thematically opposite.

#6

Shasarak

Jun 21, 2015 18:03:16

ManicMonkey wrote:
#7

TiaNadiezja

Jun 21, 2015 18:43:00 		Alignment only matters if it's an actual moral force in your campaign world, in which case you should use whatever model of it fits your world. In that case, base D&D grid works most easily because so much of the game's fluff is centered on it. But if it's not an actual theme of your campaign, best to ignore it. In neither case is trying to make it "realistic" the best option.
#8

Xeviat-DM

Jun 22, 2015 1:43:46

I'm fine with the existing D&D alignments. Like another poster said, you can act outside of your alignment. I tell my character to ask themselves how their character feels when they do something good, evil, lawful, or chaotic. If you feel good when you do good, then you're good; if you feel bad when you do evil, then you're evil.

 

Lets do a very simplistic example. Lets just say giving money to a homeless person is a good act. A good person may do it and they get the warm fuzzies for doing it; it makes them feel good. The neutral person may do it, and maybe they think it's the right thing to do, but they don't feel one way or the other for doing it. The evil person may do it, but they feel ripped off.

 

A personal example would be that I very much consider myself to be lawful. I follow the rules, and I feel nervous when I even consider breaking the rules. I confess to the rules even when it hurts me. I may break the rules, I may lie and be dishonorable, but I feel bad when I do it.

(Reply to #2)

arnwolf666

LuisCarlos17f wrote: