:smallfurious: Modified Alignments

[Malfarian]

Hello All,

One thing I never liked about D&D were alignments, then playing other games I missed them. There is something nice about committing to an ethical framework for your character's personality, but then the "stuck in the mold" was often quite frustrating.

I'm sure other games have done "variants" of alignment, I'm just not familiar with them, so I continue to roll around different ideas of my own. (feel free to point me towards another game).

I have been thinking that if I were to play again, I'd prefer to have a spectrum of alignments, rather than just "Lawful" or "Chaotic" etc. One I think I'd like is:

Honourable > Pragmatic > Selfish > Dishonourable

Now the "names" of each step need a lot of work and I'm not sure that honourable and pragmatic need be different perhaps instead something cycle would be better

Idealism > Pragmatism > "Selfish" > ?? > Fatalism > Idealism

Anyone have suggestions for improvement or know of a game that does this well?

[Amechra]

Have you looked at the Color Wheel (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?157001-Alignment-Replacement-The-Color-Wheel-3-5-PEACH)? It's an alignment rewrite that used to be pretty popular around these parts.

It might give you some ideas.

[nonsi]

.
A few days ago, I saw a suggestion to regard alignments in a less strict manner.
Everyone has good and bad in them (sometimes evil people perform acts of kindness and mercy, and good people succumb to anger), and alignments serve more as a personal compass of what a character aspires to be.

[Prince Zahn]

The Alignment system could also be a lot less difficult to work with when you retool it and use it synonymously with loyalty to something more campaign-specific. In more shades of grey settings, like. . . I dunno, the Pandora Hearts world, as an example - you have 4 noble houses with varying dispositions towards the other houses, as well as 2 or so other main factions (Pandora/House Baskerville), that could fit on one axis, and on the other end - the character's thoughts on the abyss as the other axis - I.e chains(monsters from the abyss) weapons to achieve one's ends. This is very campaign specific, yes, but campaign-specific alignments are good for campaigns where the ethical questions aren't about whether you are objectively a good person or not.

[Malfarian]

Have you looked at the Color Wheel (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?157001-Alignment-Replacement-The-Color-Wheel-3-5-PEACH)? It's an alignment rewrite that used to be pretty popular around these parts.

It might give you some ideas.

Thank you very much, I've often thought mtg oppositions /alliances would be great, which is what I was trying to lay out there with idealism - pragmatism - selfish - nihilism- fatalism - idealism. This link offers great ideas.