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View Full Version : Evolving Alignment Stories/campaigns?



Prplcheez
2011-04-13, 10:55 PM
I've been playing Fallout 3 recently and was inspired to run a campaign with my friends that uses a similar alignment system. Rather than defining your alignment at the start of the game, you define your alignment with your actions in-game. There's no way that I'm the first person to think of this, so would any Playgrounders be willing to share experience with or advice for this type of campaign?

EDIT: Title wasn't the right choice of words.

Apophis
2011-04-13, 11:17 PM
I encourage my players to play their character, not an alignment. I decide what alignment fits them best after I see how they RP.

Tanngrisnir
2011-04-13, 11:40 PM
This is the way my group and I always play. We follow the actions dictates alignment trend rather than the alignment dictates actions. We find it much more enjoyable because we find it more readily allows characters to change and grow while interacting with the story and their surroundings.

Serpentine
2011-04-14, 02:10 AM
I require my players to select an alignment for their characters at the start, but this alignment should describe the character, not define it, and I chart the alignments and how they change over time - that is, they're definitely malleable.

dsmiles
2011-04-14, 06:28 AM
I require my players to select an alignment for their characters at the start, but this alignment should describe the character, not define it, and I chart the alignments and how they change over time - that is, they're definitely malleable.Ditto. Alignment is in the "Description" chapter, not the "Straightjacket" chapter, after all.

Gaius Marius
2011-04-14, 06:33 AM
I require my players to select an alignment for their characters at the start, but this alignment should describe the character, not define it, and I chart the alignments and how they change over time - that is, they're definitely malleable.

So... how do you deal with the unavoidable Paladin-Alignment Arguments?

(Or Barbarian, Monk or Bard, actually)

Alavar
2011-04-14, 09:09 AM
The one problem that I've ran into with tracking actions and using them to determine alignment is the same problem that video games that add points up have: You usually end up with characters wildly swinging from one end of the alignment to the other, with random acts of violence or benevolence at the oddest times, usually determined by what benefits the character will have from a particular alignment. "Oh, we're about to face an X? I know they can cast (alignment based spell), let's switch our alignments to Y." *Cue massacre of village or handing out of gold

Now, I know most of you will rebut by saying that your players would never do that; they roleplay their character, not run them like a video game. The only problem is, that temptation is there, and rather palpable. AND your players are just as smart as you, so they will be able to do it intelligently enough to fool you if they know you think their metagaming hurts the story/game/funtime. Now, this doesn't mean all of your players will do that, but it's a real enough problem to be concerned about it.

I usually just do away with alignments because of this, and ask my players to just play their durn characters, else bricks'll fall on their heads.

Comet
2011-04-14, 09:16 AM
The way I see it, if the players can come up with clever enough excuses that the GM won't even notice their metagaming, they deserve whatever edge they can gain from said metagaming.

As long as their actions make sense within the context of the fiction, enough to not annoy anyone else at the table at least, I don't see any problem.

I usually don't think much about alignment systems, but if I did use one then I would be glad if the players took the time to think how they could best utilise said system to create better stories and have fun with the more game-y, mechanical elements of it all. Alignment systems are pretty goofy and abstract to begin with, so a bit of metagaming wouldn't make it any worse, I feel.

Gamer Girl
2011-04-14, 12:40 PM
Inspired to run a campaign with my friends that uses a similar alignment system. Rather than defining your alignment at the start of the game, you define your alignment with your actions in-game. There's no way that I'm the first person to think of this, so would any Playgrounders be willing to share experience with or advice for this type of campaign?


I've done this occasionally. It can work, but it has lots of pit falls.

1.The DM and the players need to be on the same page about alignment actions. Otherwise, the characters will have the wrong alignments.

2.You can't judge a person too much on extreme actions they take in extreme times, like adventuring.

3.You can't judge someone on snap shots of little things they do.


Often, when you do the grow into an alignment, you often just get a group of crazy evil characters. Few people choose to be good. And most people that say they are good, are lying.


So for this to work, you might want to print out a list of good/evil/lawful/chaotic/neutral actions, ideas and such. So that everyone knows how the Cosmic Alignment Forces(aka the DM) will judge them.

You should also do a running alignment tally for each character, and tell them when they switch or move in that direction.

Erom
2011-04-14, 12:49 PM
I do away with alignment entirely. It makes things SO much better. Then again, I play 4e which almost entirely removes alignment from mechanical effect.

I think alignment does a poor job of modelling real behavior anyhow. In the real world, it's all about relationships, not where you fall on some divine scorecard. People rarely ask "Is he a good person?" when considering how to treat you. Much, much more often the questions are like "Is he my friend?", "Has he done me any favors?", "Does he pay his bills on time?", etc etc.

Things like being honest, upright, and just do not improve peoples opinions of you a priori in most cases - the things you do BECAUSE you are honest, upright, and just do - things like not lying to people, not taking advantage of them, etc.

This leaves the game world much more like real life, and much more maleable. "Good" aligned organizations don't have to be allied. One group can consider a player a dastardly, thieving murderer, another group can consider them kind and charitable. And instead of this just being a perception issue, both groups can be right - maybe this player really hates elves, so he kills + robs elves, but then he goes back to his dwarven homeland and gives away his loot to the poor and heals the sick. Instead of tossing this person is some overarching Neutral bin, you can just have them interact more realistically and naturally with the world around them.

Makes games SO much better.

Why did I put this in this thread? Because it's really just the logical extension of evolving alignment. Instead of trying to keep track of where the player is on some simplified moral grid system, you just keep track of who likes them, and who hates them, and what relationships they've formed, what friends and enemies they've made. Like evolving alignments, it's also determined in game through RP, and it's even easier for the DM to keep track of and much more fluid.

Prplcheez
2011-04-14, 01:58 PM
*snip*

So for this to work, you might want to print out a list of good/evil/lawful/chaotic/neutral actions, ideas and such. So that everyone knows how the Cosmic Alignment Forces(aka the DM) will judge them.

You should also do a running alignment tally for each character, and tell them when they switch or move in that direction.

I've already been working on a chart, and I plan to keep players actively aware on where they stand.

erikun
2011-04-14, 02:22 PM
I've thought of this idea (for video games) and figure that the best way to handle it is a general "morality" value and a general "nationality" value. Morality is generally how nice or evil you are. Nationality is how closely aligned you are to a particular country. If you go around feeding dwarven children, then you'd have a high morality and a high nationality with the dwarves, but a low nationality with the elves (because dwarves don't like elves). If you go around robbing elven merchants and killing their townsfolk, then you'd have a low morality and a low nationality with the elves, but a high nationality with the dwarves.

Each character you interact with places different values in morality and nationality. A dwarven merchant or priest probably doesn't care much if you're helping elves rather than dwarves, but they get really upset if you start eating orphans. A retired dwarven general who has been fighting in the elf wars for years, though, just cares how much you support the dwarves and would be just as glad if you torched a few elven orphanages.

(Note: The nationality values would not always be a 1:1 trade. Feeding elven orphans would greatly increase elven relations, but only drop dwarven relations a bit. Eating elven orphans would greatly decrease elven relations, but only increase dwarven relations a bit. In general, doing something for/to a people has a greater impact than doing something for/to someone related to them.)

Of course, this requires more bookkeeping - you'll need to track morality and a loyality to each relevant nation - but you were kind of planning an absurdly large amount of bookkeeping anyways. It also dodges tricky questions like "Is killing the orcs evil?" If you are killing orc raiders, then it is likely unrelated to morality but a large drop to orc nationality. If you are killing orc trading villages, then it is a morality drop.

Apophis
2011-04-14, 02:30 PM
*Snip*
Words Words Words
That's an interesting idea. I may start using that.

Serpentine
2011-04-15, 01:44 AM
So... how do you deal with the unavoidable Paladin-Alignment Arguments?

(Or Barbarian, Monk or Bard, actually)Several ways.
1. I've never actually had a Paladin in one of my games.
2. I'm very flexible with alignment requirements, especially when they don't make any particular sense to me (which deals with the Barbarian, Monk and Bard issues).
3. I will never set up a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario that people like to use to condemn Paladins and alignment - not least because, dammit, I'm just not that clever.
4. Feelings matter. If a Paladin finds themself in one of those situations, then how they feel about it matters. If the player gives me no indication that the Paladin cares about what happened, they may well fall. If they do feel bad about it, and especially if they seek to atone for it, then they probably will not fall. If the Paladin cares, but accepts no responsibility for it, then they probably won't fall immediately, but they may do so in future, depending on where this attitude takes them - is it reasonable, well-adjusted assessment of a bad situation which will keep them grounded and allow them to handle guilt without going mental, or is it a shucking of responsibility that may lead to an "it's everyone's fault but mine" attitude and potential sociopathy?
5. Not all actions are equal. If the Paladin is having a bad day and stomps on an annoying child's sandcastle out of spite and frustration, he's not going to suddenly become Chaotic Evil. He may slip a little - but, again, maybe not if he feels bad about it - but he'll still remain Lawful Good for the time being and therefore retain his Paladinness. If he finds that he enjoys it, and starts stomping on every sandcastle he sees and then starts doing little bullyings to children on a regular basis, then maybe he'll fall.

That answer your question well enough?

Epsilon Rose
2011-04-15, 09:05 AM
By definition alignment should be fluid. It makes little sense for an evolving character to be straight jacketed into a certain set of actions for it's entire existence because it has an alignment of X or, even worse, for all their actions to be counted as Y because that's the alignment they wrote down.


The one problem that I've ran into with tracking actions and using them to determine alignment is the same problem that video games that add points up have: You usually end up with characters wildly swinging from one end of the alignment to the other, with random acts of violence or benevolence at the oddest times, usually determined by what benefits the character will have from a particular alignment. "Oh, we're about to face an X? I know they can cast (alignment based spell), let's switch our alignments to Y." *Cue massacre of village or handing out of
gold

Now, I know most of you will rebut by saying that your players would never do that; they roleplay their character, not run them like a video game. The only problem is, that temptation is there, and rather palpable. AND your players are just as smart as you, so they will be able to do it intelligently enough to fool you if they know you think their metagaming hurts the story/game/funtime. Now, this doesn't mean all of your players will do that, but it's a real enough problem to be concerned about it.

I usually just do away with alignments because of this, and ask my players to just play their durn characters, else bricks'll fall on their heads.

Right, about that, several things.

Alignment shouldn't change rapidly. For the most part a single action shouldn't change your alignment by any number of steps (causing a genocide for the fun of it probably should drop you to CE no matter where you were before but that's a very extreme action and raises questions about your players RPing). Alignment changes should be gradual requiring many ticks at each point to move to an adjacent category and almost never skipping a category.
This is a PnP game not a CRPG. You can make decisions a computer can't. In video games a computer can only act on what you do and for the most part only what you do now. When you decide a characters morality you should look at what they actually did, what they were trying to do, why they did it, and what they did in the past.

Examples: if they were trying to do good so they could get away with something more easily than they weren't doing good (that's Neutral at best and LE at worst). If they were trying to save the princess and they botch things and accidentally get a bunch of people killed it's still mostly good; if they were trying to kill a bunch of people and they accidentally saved the princess that's still Evil. If they have a Tendency to swing wildly between good and evil that's Neutral insane/blue(IE they run on alien motivations [not likely]) and people in game should act accordingly (you tend to treat mentally disturbed people a bit different than simply evil people and run screaming from Cthulhu's progeny is fairly SOP), but more importantly the points it takes to get out of the neutral categories should increase and the points to get into them should decrease. (This is true of any alignment you show a strong tendency for).
Having published point system (or even admitting you're using points will encourage meta-gaming over rping, I'd recommend just eyeballing it.