An Odd Alignment Idea

[8BitNinja]

So everyone either likes or hates the 3x3 grid, but I had this crazy idea that might work for a non D&D D20 game.

The idea comes from a mobile game (of all things) called Sword and Glory. In the game, there are several causes (For Family, For Compassion, For Religion, For Honor, etc.) to fight for. After a while, the things you fight for the most gives you a title (The Pious, The Honorable, The Family Man, etc.). If you die before receiving a title, you receive one based on your glory amount (Someone who fought for Christianity might receive The Christian for mundane glory, while reviewing The Crusader for extraordinary glory)

So what if in a game, every fight, quest, and/or campaign would have a certain caused attached to it. For example, helping out a farmer clear out pests would be For Compassion. Each task could be worth a different value decided by the DM. Then, instead of the rogue following the party being Chaotic Neutral, he campaigns For Wealth. The paladin isn't Lawful Good, he fights For (deity's name)

So what do you guys think?

[Honest Tiefling]

So...What happens when two different people campaign for the same god, but take it in completely different ways? Or even the same idea. One family man might be honorable to increase his family's glory, another might brutally and efficiently murder anyone who is a threat to their family.

How would you get everyone onto the same page as to the tone and acceptable actions allowed by the campaign?

[Skelechicken]

So...What happens when two different people campaign for the same god, but take it in completely different ways? Or even the same idea. One family man might be honorable to increase his family's glory, another might brutally and efficiently murder anyone who is a threat to their family.

How would you get everyone onto the same page as to the tone and acceptable actions allowed by the campaign?

I don't know if this is a problem. That's already an issue brought up in discussions under the current alignment system. It's rare that you get parties that are all the same alignment if you don't pre-roll for everyone or ask them to all build he same alignment. Even if they are the same alignment people tend to play it differently. Lawful good characters will execute a prisoner for their crimes just as often as they'll drop them off at the local authorities.

I like this idea. I think it's a lot more reasonable for someone to base their quest on a cause rather than some nebulous idea of good. It also encourages more balance in terms of party interest in a sandbox campaign. If you have a thief campaigning for gold they may be able to more easily strike a deal with the party about how to spend their time. "Ok I will help you save one more town of starving peasants, but then you're helping me loot the mega dungeon."

[S@tanicoaldo]

I don't get it. How does making 1000+ alignments going to be easier than the 9 we already have?

Aren’t you mixing up alignments with causes and incentives?

[Vitruviansquid]

Why?

And I'm not saying "why" as an obnoxious way of saying "no."

A major reason the alignment system doesn't work in the first place is because it is fairly meaningless in a large number of contexts. So you were a good fighter, and you did a bunch of crummy things, and now you're an evil fighter. Big whoop. Unless your DM creates rules to penalize alignment switching or you are one of the few cases in the editions that actually care, such as being a 3.5 paladin, alignment doesn't really matter if your table isn't consciously making sure it matters.

So if you repackaged the alignment system to work with titles. Well what do the titles do? How do we make the titles meaningful to players?

[veti]

I like the basic idea. But I second the "Why?"

What mechanical effects would these alignments have? I find it hard to imagine casting "Protection from People who Fight for Glory".

[SirBellias]

Pendragon has some of the examples given as stats for the characters. It's probably not the same thing that you're going for, but that may be something to look at to see what it is like to implement such things in a meaningful way.

[GPS]

I don't know about earlier editions, but in 5e these are character bonds. Separate from initiative for good reason

[Thaneus]

I see aliments more as a drive, how someone solves problems at hand.

Your suggestion is plain old cause, a cause is never an alignment. People who follow a cause have a lawful tendency though.

[erikun]

Too much bookkeeping.

Basically, you are asking the GM to not only generate and keep track of "alignments" for nearly every minor thing, but also produce some meaningful consequence for each one. After all, if they don't actually DO anything, then there isn't any point in keeping track - but if they actually do something, then someone needs to come up with what that something is. There are some systems which have a single "honor" metric that applies to everyone (Pendragon, Legend of the Five Rings) and so it is worth getting into how different honor levels affect NPC reactions and such, but it just isn't doing when you need to make lists for dozens of different variables like For Honor, For Glory, For Justice, For ___ Nation, For Revenge...

Heck, that last one is difficult enough by itself, because you could have two completely separate ideas of what "For Revenge" means depending on the character and situation.

There's also the problem with spells, items, and other mechanical parts relating to alignment. "Protection from Evil" would need to become "Protection from For Greed, For Power, For Revenge, For Puppy Kicking, For whatever else I forgot" in order to have the same function.

[Logosloki]

So everyone either likes or hates the 3x3 grid, but I had this crazy idea that might work for a non D&D D20 game.

The idea comes from a mobile game (of all things) called Sword and Glory. In the game, there are several causes (For Family, For Compassion, For Religion, For Honor, etc.) to fight for. After a while, the things you fight for the most gives you a title (The Pious, The Honorable, The Family Man, etc.). If you die before receiving a title, you receive one based on your glory amount (Someone who fought for Christianity might receive The Christian for mundane glory, while reviewing The Crusader for extraordinary glory)

So what if in a game, every fight, quest, and/or campaign would have a certain caused attached to it. For example, helping out a farmer clear out pests would be For Compassion. Each task could be worth a different value decided by the DM. Then, instead of the rogue following the party being Chaotic Neutral, he campaigns For Wealth. The paladin isn't Lawful Good, he fights For (deity's name)

So what do you guys think?

If you can handle the book keeping side of it then it would a fine idea.

Another app game idea would be game of thrones ascent which has three alignment scales: Tradition (Whether you follow the old ways or the new ways), Duty (Whether your loyalty belongs to yourself and your family or to the realm) and Integrity (the much less inspired and much more frank moral quandary of Truthfulness against Cunning). Each is a sliding scale that is tallied on a reset to award titles.

5th Edition Has Bonds, Flaws and Ideals in the background section which could well just replace alignment altogether. Maybe dish out a few extras on the bonds and ideals to get a bit more flesh.

Fate, from memory, has the player decide on seven traits and then rewards the player for interacting with them.

[Millstone85]

Replacing LG, NG and CG with "For Justice", "For Love" and "For Liberty" might clear things up.

[RazorChain]

If this gives you a reason to throw the redundant alignment system into the trash then go for it!

If my group of 12 year olds came to the conclusion that the alignment system was utterly stupid then either the system is utterly brilliant and way beyond 12 year olds comprehension! Or it is utterly, utterly stupid

[Cluedrew]

In my opinion, it somehow manages to be both.

Depends on what part we are talking about.

[Bohandas]

Sounds like the alignment system from D20 Modern

[8BitNinja]

So...What happens when two different people campaign for the same god, but take it in completely different ways? Or even the same idea. One family man might be honorable to increase his family's glory, another might brutally and efficiently murder anyone who is a threat to their family.

How would you get everyone onto the same page as to the tone and acceptable actions allowed by the campaign?

They would both be fighting For Family, just for different families.

I don't get it. How does making 1000+ alignments going to be easier than the 9 we already have?

Aren’t you mixing up alignments with causes and incentives?

It's not easier, just a crazy idea I had

[Nightcanon]

For non-D&D game, why bother with having an alignment mechanic at all? You could certainly encourage players to identify what it is that motivates their characters (I vaguely recall someone positing a system whereby players had to rank various things- faith, lord, family, wealth, personal power etc- in lieu of alignment in Dragon magazine in the later days of 1st ed AD&D) and play to that, but there's no particular reason why it would need to mechanised beyond "you have obeyed your church ahead of your lord, ArchSister Joan is pleased with you, Prince John is angry, GM roleplays church and crown representatives accordingly when you meet them".
Removing alignment from D&D is tricky because it has mechanical effects (who takes extra damage from axiomatic weapons, defining what the protection from evil spell does), and, yes, it can be used (generally problematically) to delineate 'sides'. It seems to me that the snag in removing alignment from D&D is what you do about the mechanical effects, not the role-play aspects (in general I think that alignment is more of a hindrance than a help here).

[Joe the Rat]

So having a primary Cause or Motive or Ideal to replace... well, a primary Cause or Ideal.

*puts on the tweed jacket with the arm patches* You see, back in the days of old, Alignment was a prerequisite for certain things - limitations on classes, sometimes races... oh, and languages. Everybody spoke their alignment tongue - a secret code/speech/old tongue shared by others of the same ideological letter-code (handy for negotiations!). You were not to use it with outsiders under pain of your DM going "tut, tut" at you. Alignments (all THREE or NINE of them) were cosmic concepts, ideals of the universe which were, 8 times out of 9, some degree of bonkers. You act in accordance with your alignment, good on you. Defy it, you might have to change teams, which may come with an xp penalty (no big, the fighter got wight-drained back down to level 8, so you'll be in the same ballpark again), and the whole brainwashing the old secret cult tongue out of your head thing... somehow.

So alignment was somewhere between a cult and a religion, where "not following the philosophy" is your sin.

Since the game got away from the "Poul Andersen and Micheal Moorcock" philosophic cosmology, Alignment was not your Team any more. Doing away with change penalties (Paladins aside) really drew this into the descriptive focus... which is the bundle of arguments we all know and love/hate/make memes for.


What 8-Bit is suggesting is really going back to the Old Ways, only replacing the dedication to the Cosmic Goal of Universal "Beatific Order and Justice" or "Caffeinated Squirrel Logic" with a set of Ideal (or Virtue) tracks, and focusing positive (following progresses you forward to... something) vs punitive (character setbacks for "falling"). Your goals are prescriptive (and potentially fluid), your actual ratings the descriptive. Valor may be your goal, but you are still very bad at it. Limit yourself to a small number of game/setting/campaign relevant options (like 5), or have your players choose their ideals they wish to pursue (3 out of howevermany), and roll with it.

You can steal be inspired a lot from the Storyteller system for this. And Pendragon (combinations representing specific values. Virtues shift, right?). And Legend of the Five Rings (Honor, baby!)

[Segev]

Generally speaking, PnP games' alignment works best when the only time it becomes a mechanically-tracked item is when magic enforces it. Otherwise, it should be something we take with the colloquial understanding we as a culture have of the terms, distilled by the specific needs and views of the table it's happening at. DM Allen can tell when PC Barbara is a generally Good and Chaotic person, and when PC Charlie is a more Neutral but Lawful person. And if there is disagreement amongst the players, they can discuss why and how, and DM Allen can lay down some guidelines and advice as to what he sees as "telling" choices when they come up.

As long as Allen isn't trying to create contrived paradoxes, players can either play to demonstrate the alignment as Allen believes in it or allow their alignments to shift. And if class features are on the line, they can discuss more strenuously, or work out an arc where they invent some way to regain lost powers that are more in line with "who they are."

The only time "you need to make this choice because you're Evil" type things should come up is when you've been cursed or otherwise magically forced to be Evil. Which is always its own kettle of fish in terms of what's fun and how to best play it. You need player buy-in for that kind of thing or it's going to amount to a wonky Dominate effect.

There's little reason to formally track alignment shifts on an action-by-action basis. If a questionable action comes up, simply point it out, but then move on. One action won't shift an alignment unless it's incredibly, grotesquely egregious. (e.g. a formerly Good person deciding that mass genocide of innocents is something he's just got to do and follow through on in one fell swoop.)

Video games need to do this kind of thing, because there's no other way to judge. You can't examine purpose, motive, goal, habit, etc.; you can only monitor how actions and choices align with ethoi. The strength of PnP is that you can watch with more nuance and make non-quantitative value judgments. Don't throw that away.

[8BitNinja]

So having a primary Cause or Motive or Ideal to replace... well, a primary Cause or Ideal.

*puts on the tweed jacket with the arm patches* You see, back in the days of old, Alignment was a prerequisite for certain things - limitations on classes, sometimes races... oh, and languages. Everybody spoke their alignment tongue - a secret code/speech/old tongue shared by others of the same ideological letter-code (handy for negotiations!). You were not to use it with outsiders under pain of your DM going "tut, tut" at you. Alignments (all THREE or NINE of them) were cosmic concepts, ideals of the universe which were, 8 times out of 9, some degree of bonkers. You act in accordance with your alignment, good on you. Defy it, you might have to change teams, which may come with an xp penalty (no big, the fighter got wight-drained back down to level 8, so you'll be in the same ballpark again), and the whole brainwashing the old secret cult tongue out of your head thing... somehow.

So alignment was somewhere between a cult and a religion, where "not following the philosophy" is your sin.

Since the game got away from the "Poul Andersen and Micheal Moorcock" philosophic cosmology, Alignment was not your Team any more. Doing away with change penalties (Paladins aside) really drew this into the descriptive focus... which is the bundle of arguments we all know and love/hate/make memes for.


What 8-Bit is suggesting is really going back to the Old Ways, only replacing the dedication to the Cosmic Goal of Universal "Beatific Order and Justice" or "Caffeinated Squirrel Logic" with a set of Ideal (or Virtue) tracks, and focusing positive (following progresses you forward to... something) vs punitive (character setbacks for "falling"). Your goals are prescriptive (and potentially fluid), your actual ratings the descriptive. Valor may be your goal, but you are still very bad at it. Limit yourself to a small number of game/setting/campaign relevant options (like 5), or have your players choose their ideals they wish to pursue (3 out of howevermany), and roll with it.

You can steal be inspired a lot from the Storyteller system for this. And Pendragon (combinations representing specific values. Virtues shift, right?). And Legend of the Five Rings (Honor, baby!)

Don't get me wrong, I love alignment. But like I said, this was an idea for a non D&D game where alignment isn't a mechanic.

[Nightcanon]

Don't get me wrong, I love alignment. But like I said, this was an idea for a non D&D game where alignment isn't a mechanic.

Without wanting to appear rude, and in a spirit of genuine curiosity, I'd like to repeat/ rephrase my previous question:
Given that this is non-D&D (so you've successfully separated PC behaviour from game mechanics to do with PCs/NPCs/monsters having alignment-based vulnerabilities or bonuses), why introduce a more complex way of tracking/scoring PC motivations? I can see that a cRPG engine might need you to track brownie-points with a number of factions to give you a reputation and influence how various NPCs and NPC-groups interact with your PCs, but in a ttRPG why not, y'know, just roleplay those interactions based on the party's history (to the extent that it is known to the NPC), the NPC's allegiances and motives (overt or covert), and so on?
If you perform a great service for a king or bishop, either he is going to knight you, grant you land or titles, or bestow the blessing of his god, or he isn't, based on political expediency, nature of service, character background, and so on. What he isn't going to do is grant you 2 chivalry points, 1 religious devotion point, or whatever, to add to your pile of points to be cashed in for a title once you have enough. Surely the realistic thing to do is roleplay it?

[Joe the Rat]

Don't get me wrong, I love alignment. But like I said, this was an idea for a non D&D game where alignment isn't a mechanic.

So? We assign alignments to tv, film, print media, and occasionally other game system characters - including systems with their own alignment systems. They don't always call them alignments, but they have the descriptive/ideals/motivation functions.


On the scaling: Minutiae of action is not the way to go; you want to operate in broad strokes, particularly if you have more dimensions than one (Vampire's Path system worked act-by-act, but only insofar as "sins" only mattered when you hit a threshold of heinousness). Ideally, I would make alignment scoring a once-per-session, by group determination. Who really deserves to gain (or lose) pips. This does bring up a little bit of concern about scoring collusion, but that says more about Trust being a personal value, but one in which I have mediocre ranking.

[Jay R]

It's a good idea and similar things have been done in the past, but it does not replace alignment. There still needs to be some understanding of Good and Evil for these passions or goals to be judged by, or there's no reason to think the paladin fighting "For Compassion" or "For Sredni Vashtar" is any better than the warlord fighting "For Power" or "For Myself".

Pendragon has some of the examples given as stats for the characters. It's probably not the same thing that you're going for, but that may be something to look at to see what it is like to implement such things in a meaningful way.

I was going to mention the Pendragon Passions as well. You start with Love of your Family and Loyalty to your Lord, and can pick up Passions along the way.

Also, in the original Chivalry and Sorcery, knights collected Honor Points separate from experience points. Rescuing a princess is worth more honor pints than rescuing a milkmaid, even if they represent the same experience points.

I don't get it. How does making 1000+ alignments going to be easier than the 9 we already have?

Aren’t you mixing up alignments with causes and incentives?

To answer the second question first, yes, far too many players assume that their incentives must come from their alignment.

To answer the first question, trying to treat 1000+ incentives as 1000+ incentives is much easier than trying to shoehorn them into 9 ill-fitting boxes. The biggest flaw in the alignment system is that it's trying to model something extremely complex as nine overly simplistic categories.

And 1000+ is a woefully inadequate estimate. Since one possible goal is "For Love of My Lady (or Lord)", or "For Revenge For What That Person Did to Me", there are at least twice as many potential variants as there are people in the world.

[Yora]

If this gives you a reason to throw the redundant alignment system into the trash then go for it!

If my group of 12 year olds came to the conclusion that the alignment system was utterly stupid then either the system is utterly brilliant and way beyond 12 year olds comprehension! Or it is utterly, utterly stupid

Dave Arneson actually wrote of the intention behind adding alignment. It didn't work and wasn't fun.

[8BitNinja]

Without wanting to appear rude, and in a spirit of genuine curiosity, I'd like to repeat/ rephrase my previous question:
Given that this is non-D&D (so you've successfully separated PC behaviour from game mechanics to do with PCs/NPCs/monsters having alignment-based vulnerabilities or bonuses), why introduce a more complex way of tracking/scoring PC motivations? I can see that a cRPG engine might need you to track brownie-points with a number of factions to give you a reputation and influence how various NPCs and NPC-groups interact with your PCs, but in a ttRPG why not, y'know, just roleplay those interactions based on the party's history (to the extent that it is known to the NPC), the NPC's allegiances and motives (overt or covert), and so on?
If you perform a great service for a king or bishop, either he is going to knight you, grant you land or titles, or bestow the blessing of his god, or he isn't, based on political expediency, nature of service, character background, and so on. What he isn't going to do is grant you 2 chivalry points, 1 religious devotion point, or whatever, to add to your pile of points to be cashed in for a title once you have enough. Surely the realistic thing to do is roleplay it?

That's true, but I wasn't trying to go for realistic. I see what you are saying.

The allegiance points could be tied to XP somehow, or it could grant abilities. The idea isn't fully thought out.

[Nightcanon]

Fair enough. FWIW I really like the notion of asking players to think about what it is that motivates their PCs along the lines of a hierarchy of ideals/values/outside responsibilities, far better than I like 3x3 alignment.

[Jay R]

Fair enough. FWIW I really like the notion of asking players to think about what it is that motivates their PCs along the lines of a hierarchy of ideals/values/outside responsibilities, far better than I like 3x3 alignment.

Sure- who doesn't? And I like swords far better than I like scabbards. That doesn't mean that one of them replaces the other.

Motivation is not alignment. Alignment is not motivation.

Like swords and scabbards, you need both, and they should fit each other.

[S@tanicoaldo]

This idea is silly and you should feel ashamed!

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[Nightcanon]

Sure- who doesn't? And I like swords far better than I like scabbards. That doesn't mean that one of them replaces the other.

Motivation is not alignment. Alignment is not motivation.

Like swords and scabbards, you need both, and they should fit each other.

Philosophically, I'm not sure that this is true. The original post talks about a non-D&D system, which is important. Alignment is hardbaked into D&D because of the mechanical concepts of who takes extra damage from aligned weapons and is susceptable to aligned spells and so on- unravelling it is going to take so much reworking of spells, character classes and so on that yes you could say that you need alignment in D&D, but in a non- D&D game? Not necessarily, in my view. 3x3 Alignment is a poor attempt to create a mechanic for constraining behaviour arising, if the Dave Arneson quotes linked to above are to be believed, from a desire to stop characters murderhoboing each other. Attempts to pigeon-hole non-D&D fictional characters, historical figures, and so on into the 3x3 grid don't work because there is no real-life equivalence. It's tempting to say that there is no interesting fictional character (as opposed to caricature) whose 3x3 alignment can be unequivocally stated, because almost by definition, the interest in the character stems from conflicts between different motivations and tendencies. Alignment is neither necessary nor sufficient to describe a character. Outside of the mechanical necessities in D&D, you don't need it at all.

[Jay R]

Philosophically, I'm not sure that this is true. The original post talks about a non-D&D system, which is important. Alignment is hardbaked into D&D because of the mechanical concepts of who takes extra damage from aligned weapons and is susceptable to aligned spells and so on- unravelling it is going to take so much reworking of spells, character classes and so on that yes you could say that you need alignment in D&D, but in a non- D&D game? Not necessarily, in my view. 3x3 Alignment is a poor attempt to create a mechanic for constraining behaviour arising, if the Dave Arneson quotes linked to above are to be believed, from a desire to stop characters murderhoboing each other. Attempts to pigeon-hole non-D&D fictional characters, historical figures, and so on into the 3x3 grid don't work because there is no real-life equivalence. It's tempting to say that there is no interesting fictional character (as opposed to caricature) whose 3x3 alignment can be unequivocally stated, because almost by definition, the interest in the character stems from conflicts between different motivations and tendencies. Alignment is neither necessary nor sufficient to describe a character. Outside of the mechanical necessities in D&D, you don't need it at all.

I agree with all your minor points, but I don't think that leads to the conclusion that alignment is not needed in any form.

I don't like the 3x3 matrix, and have no use for the Law/Chaos axis.

However, a fundamental difference between Good and Evil is essential for a simulation of classic fantasy, or of a medieval-based world.

For people with no desire to simulate classic fantasy or a medieval-based world, you may be right that it isn't necessary. But its purpose isn't to fulfill the mechanical necessities of D&D, but to simulate a world.