Character Questions for new players

[AwfulLawful]

I play 3.5 with a group of children on a regular basis as part of my job. They’re about 11 years old and have a hard time understanding the concept about alignment (Im from Denmark, and there’s no direct translating of that word into Danish )

To solve this slight problem, and to make them think more about their characters and thus make them better roleplayers Im working on a list of questions they’ll have to answer to help define their characters (10-15 questions should do)

What would be good questions to include in such a list? And Im really trying to avoid questions like “are you good?”, “are you chaotic?” and so on….

Hope you can help me

Awfullawful

[Narmoth]

How things were translated to Norwegian in D&D basic:

Livsanskulese eller livsholdning:
God, nøytral og ond
Rettskaffen, nøytral og kaotisk

[Keewatin]

You know you can ignore alignment for now and just add it to their characters after you see their reactions to situations, just start them off Neutral and see where they end up

[IthilanorStPete]

The 10 Minute Background

[Deme]

Well, in terms of questions that help with alignment... Well, first, it'd help to remind them that no answer's wrong here, but...

Someone comes up to your character and asks for money, saying they need it to feed their family. What does your character do, and why?

In a non-alignment question, there's...

What sort of family did/does your character have?

How did they feel about their family?

What is one thing your character likes to do when he/she's got downtime?

I'll probably think up more.

[Asgardian]

You could try just telling them that there's different types of good guys and different type of bad guys and ask which type of character they want to be. Provide a couple examples of each alignment type from popular media sources they'd know so they have a firm idea of what you mean

For examples you may wind up with Superman being your example of Lawful good, Conan being Neutral Good, etc...

[Stegyre]

The 10 Minute Background

I'm bookmarking that for my players. Excellent idea, and just what I was thinking about.

[RelentlessImp]

You could try just telling them that there's different types of good guys and different type of bad guys and ask which type of character they want to be. Provide a couple examples of each alignment type from popular media sources they'd know so they have a firm idea of what you mean

For examples you may wind up with Superman being your example of Lawful good, Conan being Neutral Good, etc...

I dunno, Superman doesn't seem Lawful Good to me. He'd be a Law Enforcement Officer if he was. Neutral Good - willing to do what needs to be done regardless of how the law operates. That's Superman.

A good LG character example would be Commissioner Gordon from Batman, instead.

Sorry, I had to nitpick. I have nothing to offer constructively, beyond saying the 10-minute background is a good way to help flesh out their characters. If you have access to Shadowrun 4E's Runner's Companion, there's a questionnaire in there that works very well, as well.

[Pharaoh's Fist]

For examples you may wind up with Superman being your example of Lawful good, Conan being Neutral Good, etc...

Superman is a d*ck.

[Telonius]

Well, in terms of questions that help with alignment... Well, first, it'd help to remind them that no answer's wrong here, but...

Someone comes up to your character and asks for money, saying they need it to feed their family. What does your character do, and why?

In a non-alignment question, there's...

What sort of family did/does your character have?

How did they feel about their family?

What is one thing your character likes to do when he/she's got downtime?

I'll probably think up more.

I'd second something like this. For PCs, alignment is all about choices. A series of questions (kind of like Ultima) could help you narrow it down. So...

"You capture an enemy miles away from civilization. What do you do with him?"

"The king has put up "Wanted" posters. The person is somebody you know, but not a close friend of yours. You know the person is innocent of the crime. Do you do anything about this? If so, what?"

"While you are travelling in a foreign kingdom, you discover that the kingdom allows slavery. Do you do anything about this? If so, what?"

"After defeating a group of marauders, you find that they've stolen a valuable religious artifact from a village not far from you. The artifact has guaranteed good harvests for the village for years. Without the artifact, the village has the same chance of a good or poor harvest as all the rest of the villages. What do you do with the artifact?"

[Umael]

One of the best depictions of the alignment system came from the Wizardry computer game. It didn't go into Law vs. Chaos, but it described the Good vs. Evil like this:

A Good person will go out of his (or her) way to help an old lady across the street.
A Neutral person will help an old lady across the street if he (or she) was going the same way.
An Evil person will help an old lady across the street for a fee.

I don't have a good one for Law vs. Chaos, unfortunately.

[Pharaoh's Fist]

A Good person will go out of his (or her) way to help an old lady across the street.
A Neutral person will help an old lady across the street if he (or she) was going the same way.
An Evil person will help mug an old lady across the street for a fee and steal her dentures.

Fixed it for you.

[Stegyre]

Fixed it for you.

QFT.

"Evil" in Wizardry is very different than EVIL in D&D's alignment system. In shorthand, it's the difference between "selfish" and "sociopathic."