Useful Morality Subsystems (Alignment Replacements)

[Jorren]

Start with a system that does not place the gamemaster in a position to interpret the morality of player actions.

This should solve the majority of your problems with alignment-related systems.

[OldTrees1]

Sure, but I don't see how alignments are the best choice of words. To use the OotS examples again, we could use "Lawful Good" to describe both Miko and O-Chul or we could use "judgemental, aggressive" for the former and "protective, heroic" to describe the latter. Same amount of words, but I think the latter pair is more useful.

The right summary words depends on the question(s) you are asking. And it is fine to use the same words to mean different things.

I do agree that the latter pair is more useful for most questions, but it does not answer the question I am more interested in. So I might write down:

"judgemental, aggressive, moral with failings" and "protective, heroic, moral exemplar"

Or something similar, because "judgemental, aggressive" also partially describes Redcloak. I would want some differentiation in my notes about their moral character (including Redcloaks potential rise).

[Quertus]

Sure, but I don't see how alignments are the best choice of words. To use the OotS examples again, we could use "Lawful Good" to describe both Miko and O-Chul or we could use "judgemental, aggressive" for the former and "protective, heroic" to describe the latter. Same amount of words, but I think the latter pair is more useful.

Bingo!

Alignment is just… bad. Inefficient. Suboptimal. When it isn't actively detrimental.

[Tanarii]

Alignment is shorthand to define some broadly defined moral and social attitudes, for use by the Players (PCs) or DM (NPCs) as motivations.

It works best when it's not the only motivations being used for a character, as it can be too easily proscriptive. And it's pretty much useless when used as a ex post facto label being applied after viewing and judging previous actions, or descriptive. Both proscriptive and descriptive are what ruins alignment.

You can not use it if you want, but that means either replacing it with other specifically defined broad moral and social attitude motivations that each creature must individually have made up for them, or having a game in which broad social and moral attitudes aren't a required part of personality motivations.

There's nothing wrong with either of those. The former takes more work but potentially results in more interesting variations, and the latter just results in a different flavor of game.

Edit: obviously all this is irrelevant in the truly old-school Law-Neutral-Chaos method of alignment, which was very roughly shorthand for Team Civilization, Team Nature, and Team Conquering Civilization/Entropy

[Telok]

Alignment is shorthand to define some broadly defined moral and social attitudes, for use by the Players (PCs) or DM (NPCs) as motivations

Issue: Moral and social attitudes vary between individuals, cultures, geographic regions, social strata, life experiences etc., etc., etc.

Going with D&D alignment is often like painting with "red" that includes orange, brown, and violet. As soon as you leave the inarguable core (nice <-> not nice, follows rules <-> breaks rules) people start arguing because they have different expectations.

Honestly, I've had far better results using the Palladium scrupulous alignments as paladin codes than any description of "lawful good" I've ever run across.

[Tanarii]

Issue: Moral and social attitudes vary between individuals, cultures, geographic regions, social strata, life experiences etc., etc., etc.

Going with D&D alignment is often like painting with "red" that includes orange, brown, and violet. As soon as you leave the inarguable core (nice <-> not nice, follows rules <-> breaks rules) people start arguing because they have different expectations.

If they're arguing, it's because they aren't using it as part of the player's motivation in roleplaying the PC (aka making decisions in the fantasy environment). Because In that case, what matters is the players opinion. Not anyone else's.

If the DM wants to put restrictions on the moral and social attitudes of the game, they need to explain what they mean by it in advance, so the players understand.

Honestly, I've had far better results using the Palladium scrupulous alignments as paladin codes than any description of "lawful good" I've ever run across.

Thats interesting, because the Palladium alignments are far more heavily defined that D&D alignments. That makes them more useful as a code, but less useful as motivations. They're not broad enough to fit other personality traits easily in to. They're clearly designed to be covering a host of personality traits in and of themselves.

[Segev]

Okay.

why do we need a label to tell us this? show don't tell, a character is better established through their actions than anything a made up label can do.

Why do we need a label to tell us that something has di-hydrogen monoxide molecules clinging via electrostatic effects in such a way that it is weighted down and engaging in behaviors with different cohesive properties from if it were not so laden with such a fluid? "Wet" doesn't tell us anything that we couldn't "show" via description, after all.

Labels are useful because they tell us information quickly. If you need more specificity, elaborate. But scoffing that labels are unnecessary is missing the point of language itself. (It's also a trope in sci-fi and fantasy that really, really irks me. The super-advanced hyper-intelligent being mocks petty mortals/humans for their need to "name everything" and claims it inhibits understanding. The opposite is true: it is our ability to name things, to apply mental symbols that categorize and define, which enhances and enables our understanding of concepts. The "super-intelligent being" may as well be mocking humans for insisting on using math to model physics.-

Alignment is shorthand to define some broadly defined moral and social attitudes, for use by the Players (PCs) or DM (NPCs) as motivations.

It works best when it's not the only motivations being used for a character, as it can be too easily proscriptive. And it's pretty much useless when used as a ex post facto label being applied after viewing and judging previous actions, or descriptive. Both proscriptive and descriptive are what ruins alignment.

I agree with the first paragraph, but have some disagreement with the second. Descriptive works just fine. The key is that "descriptive" doesn't mean that there aren't ways to judge/detect it.

Descriptive alignment works just fine if it's used accurately. "He's Chaotic Good" is useful to know, assuming that the descriptive qualities that led to that label are accurate. On a PC, a descriptive alignment declaration is a declaration of intent. If that intent changes, or isn't met, the alignment may shift. This is similarly true for NPCs, but unless the DM is really bad at guessing what alignment might be portrayed in a given scene by a given NPC, only long-running NPCs who have time to show character growth/change are likely to run into problems with this.

[Batcathat]

Labels are useful because they tell us information quickly. If you need more specificity, elaborate. But scoffing that labels are unnecessary is missing the point of language itself. (It's also a trope in sci-fi and fantasy that really, really irks me. The super-advanced hyper-intelligent being mocks petty mortals/humans for their need to "name everything" and claims it inhibits understanding. The opposite is true: it is our ability to name things, to apply mental symbols that categorize and define, which enhances and enables our understanding of concepts. The "super-intelligent being" may as well be mocking humans for insisting on using math to model physics.-

Yes, labels can be very useful, but not all labels are. If Lawful Good has two dozen different interpretations, how much time do we really save by labeling one character as such? Sure, we might get a very vague idea of their drives and intentions but I doubt it would be much more useful than any other two word description, as with my Miko/O-Chul example above.

[Segev]

Yes, labels can be very useful, but not all labels are. If Lawful Good has two dozen different interpretations, how much time do we really save by labeling one character as such? Sure, we might get a very vague idea of their drives and intentions but I doubt it would be much more useful than any other two word description, as with my Miko/O-Chul example above.

The alignments have consistent themes to them. The "two dozen different interpretations" are almost always due to people specifically wanting to make some sort of point.

Miko is not LG by the broad strokes standards. She's LN working for an LG society, so the laws she follows are motivated by Good even though she is not. One MIGHT argue that she started LG and fell to LN, but the things people talk about when discussing Miko being an example of "different intepretations" of LG are really her actions taken that lead to her fall.

So such arguments are essentially saying, "because we watched this initially-wet towel sit out in the sun for hours, 'wet' has varying interpretations that make it meaningless, since the end result was a dry towel."

[Telonius]

Every "alignment" (in the D&D sense) has moral values that come into conflict with each other. What you choose when they come into conflict will show what a character really values. Something like the old "Ultima: Quest of the Avatar" class questionnaire tries to get at that. When starting the game, it asks the player a series of "ethical dilemma" questions that figures out where the character stands on eight separate "virtues" (moral values), like Honesty, Compassion, Valor, and so on. It assigns the class based on the answers. (If Compassion is your biggest one, you're a Bard; Honesty, a Mage; Valor, a Fighter, and so on).

They picked eight because they wanted to have a game with eight main dungeons. But there's nothing saying you couldn't come up with different ones, or as many as you want; and nothing saying you'd need to tie the value to the class like they did.

[Quertus]

The alignments have consistent themes to them. The "two dozen different interpretations" are almost always due to people specifically wanting to make some sort of point.

Miko is not LG by the broad strokes standards. She's LN working for an LG society, so the laws she follows are motivated by Good even though she is not. One MIGHT argue that she started LG and fell to LN, but the things people talk about when discussing Miko being an example of "different intepretations" of LG are really her actions taken that lead to her fall.

So such arguments are essentially saying, "because we watched this initially-wet towel sit out in the sun for hours, 'wet' has varying interpretations that make it meaningless, since the end result was a dry towel."

Impossible. She had her Paladin powers, so she absolutely definitionally *had* to be Lawful Good.

Her world's interpretation of "Lawful Good" includes (at least one of) your interpretations of Lawful Neutral.

Still convinced that these are meaningful labels?

(They're clearly *suboptimal* labels for their stated intent)

(Really, the whole arc is… badly done for showing a "fall", as (as I recall) she doesn't exactly feel that "high" to begin with. Good thing it's a spoof world)

[Telok]

If they're arguing, it's because they aren't using it as part of the player's motivation in roleplaying the PC (aka making decisions in the fantasy environment). Because In that case, what matters is the players opinion. Not anyone else's.

Take for example something like mercy killings. People have disagreed on basically everything surrounding them. It is not an exceptional statement to say that you could have a player & DM where one thought such a thing was lawful good and the other thinks that it is evil murder. That's the sort of "d&d alignment problem" (admittedly an extreme example) that I've been seeing for decades, and why I'm not exactly a fan of how they're tied to modern RL cultures & ethics.

Thats interesting, because the Palladium alignments are far more heavily defined that D&D alignments. That makes them more useful as a code, but less useful as motivations. They're not broad enough to fit other personality traits easily in to. They're clearly designed to be covering a host of personality traits in and of themselves.

This brings up something interesting. I think you use "alignment" as a cause of character personality, where I use it as an effect of character personality. I would do something like "Bob McUrist is a loyal, honest dwarf who hates orcs and rarely drinks too much. Therefore Bob is LG with a side of prejudice.", and it sounds like you would do "Bob is a LG dwarf. Therefore he is loyal, honest, does not drink too much, and hates evil (especially orcs)." So I see someone picking a Palladium alignment and think they're saying that the character has morals and ethics that include those things. It sounds like you'd see that as someone picking a personality for the character based on the alignment. That right?

[Segev]

Impossible. She had her Paladin powers, so she absolutely definitionally *had* to be Lawful Good.

Her world's interpretation of "Lawful Good" includes (at least one of) your interpretations of Lawful Neutral.

Still convinced that these are meaningful labels?

(They're clearly *suboptimal* labels for their stated intent)

(Really, the whole arc is… badly done for showing a "fall", as (as I recall) she doesn't exactly feel that "high" to begin with. Good thing it's a spoof world)

She follows the precepts of Good because the Law she follows is based around it. She had no reason to try to work around it nor justify any of her prejudices when they didn't apply, because she'd never had them challenged: they'd been right in the past. Her fall comes from having her prejudices challenged and choosing to cling to them in the face of reality, choosing her orderly but mistaken view of the world over a reality that includes nuance and room for goodness as well as law. She thus slipped from LG to LN and lost her powers.

[Lord Raziere]

Why do we need a label to tell us that something has di-hydrogen monoxide molecules clinging via electrostatic effects in such a way that it is weighted down and engaging in behaviors with different cohesive properties from if it were not so laden with such a fluid? "Wet" doesn't tell us anything that we couldn't "show" via description, after all.

Labels are useful because they tell us information quickly. If you need more specificity, elaborate. But scoffing that labels are unnecessary is missing the point of language itself. (It's also a trope in sci-fi and fantasy that really, really irks me. The super-advanced hyper-intelligent being mocks petty mortals/humans for their need to "name everything" and claims it inhibits understanding. The opposite is true: it is our ability to name things, to apply mental symbols that categorize and define, which enhances and enables our understanding of concepts. The "super-intelligent being" may as well be mocking humans for insisting on using math to model physics.-

Why do you feel the need to confine morality to a label?

A person's morality isn't as simple as saying they follow the law or not and are a good person or a bad person. It never is, and I'd never like to simplify down to such nonsense. Why use something that doesn't accurately represent it at all? Worse, why use to tell information TOO quickly? Again, Show don't tell. I refer back to my Han Solo example. some things are better left unknown until the right time.

And add that I experience more interesting moral situations by removing alignment than by putting it in. Why? because I can define my characters morality however I want without being shunted into one of the nine arbitrary squares. I don't need to consider something that distracts from thinking of my characters values and how their logic works. Plus alignment and the classes that speak of it tend to have the Bastila Effect: the one who most holds to morality becomes overly preachy about it and everyone else ends up avoiding them. Named just now for the fact that many people dislike bastila and leave in her in the Ebon Hawk as soon as they can get Jolee Bindo and Juhani as an all jedi party.

Spoiler: Kotor 1 spoilers

Show

Not that its advisable to use Bastila much anyways, because it isn't advisable, given that she is captured and turns to the dark side 3/4's through the game and is not useable afterwards.

like we get it Bastila, don't turn to the daaaaaaark side of the force, it'll make us kick babies, eat puppies, and think The Room is quality entertainment, let me play out my assassin sidequest then I'll get back to saving the galaxy by sith force lightning, choking and draining life force from criminals, sith and the people that work for them. same goes for DnD: I give exactly zero cares about whatever the paladin wants me to do, and screw where universe thinks I belong. let me play my character how I want, I'll get rid of the big bad ickiness when the time comes. you preach at me for falling to the Chaotic Evil side of the cosmos, I'll roll my eyes and go "hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good crossbow at your side kid".

or take Dragon Age Origins. I liked that a lot better. alignment was unnecessary because I ended up doing all the good stuff anyways because I wanted to do it, not because I'm supposed to. but at the same time, there was no right or wrong answer so I could decide for myself whether something was the right thing to do, not some cosmic morality. I define my actions not some system. No, it doesn't still define me, no not even in that way. No not even if you bring up the communication argument, I communicate it just fine without it thank you. and sometimes, maybe I want it to be ambiguous sometimes, and thus not communicate it well at all. alignment is expectations and I don't want those, as expectations are at their best when they're broken.

also Chaos shouldn't even BE apart of alignment, alignment is a form of order and thus antithetical to the vey idea of chaos, thus if its apart of alignment, chaos doesn't really exist and thats just saddening.

[Batcathat]

The alignments have consistent themes to them. The "two dozen different interpretations" are almost always due to people specifically wanting to make some sort of point.

Miko is not LG by the broad strokes standards. She's LN working for an LG society, so the laws she follows are motivated by Good even though she is not. One MIGHT argue that she started LG and fell to LN, but the things people talk about when discussing Miko being an example of "different intepretations" of LG are really her actions taken that lead to her fall.

So such arguments are essentially saying, "because we watched this initially-wet towel sit out in the sun for hours, 'wet' has varying interpretations that make it meaningless, since the end result was a dry towel."

Depending on whom you ask, there being two dozen interpretations of the same alignment could probably be called both an exaggeration and an understatement. Which is kind of my point. In order to not constrict PCs into specific personalities, alignments have to be so vague they barely say anything meaningful about the individual character.

Perhaps using specific characters, especially one that has falling from grace as part of her character arc, was a mistake. What I meant was that I can't think of a single situation where knowing a character's alignment would tell me more about them than an individual two word description.

I suppose it could be argued that it's quicker to assign a preexisting alignment to a character than to come up with an actual personality, however brief. Which I suppose is technically true. But I don't think I've ever met a GM who didn't think of at least something beyond an alignment for a character's personality or motivation. "Greedy, bloodthirsty" might not tell me much about the no name bandit, but it tells me more about that individual bandit than just "Neutral Evil".

[Tanarii]

I agree with the first paragraph, but have some disagreement with the second. Descriptive works just fine. The key is that "descriptive" doesn't mean that there aren't ways to judge/detect it.

Descriptive alignment works just fine if it's used accurately. "He's Chaotic Good" is useful to know, assuming that the descriptive qualities that led to that label are accurate. On a PC, a descriptive alignment declaration is a declaration of intent. If that intent changes, or isn't met, the alignment may shift. This is similarly true for NPCs, but unless the DM is really bad at guessing what alignment might be portrayed in a given scene by a given NPC, only long-running NPCs who have time to show character growth/change are likely to run into problems with this.

Others have already pointed out the kinds of problems this runs into, but I'll put it short and to the point. All descriptive labeling alignment is good for is causing arguments between the DM (who is doing the judging) and the player (who is doing the roleplaying).

A DM using descriptive labeling, and taking on the role of being the judge of actions and changing Pc alignment based on their judgement, is either telling a player they are roleplaying the old alignment wrong, or that they should change the way they are roleplaying to match the new alignment.

[Segev]

Others have already pointed out the kinds of problems this runs into, but I'll put it short and to the point. All descriptive labeling alignment is good for is causing arguments between the DM (who is doing the judging) and the player (who is doing the roleplaying).

A DM using descriptive labeling, and taking on the role of being the judge of actions and changing Pc alignment based on their judgement, is either telling a player they are roleplaying the old alignment wrong, or that they should change the way they are roleplaying to match the new alignment.

I disagree. It is useful because it provides hooks for mechanics. If the DM and player actually disagree on something regarding a descriptive alignment, they should discuss it and come to an agreement. If the DM and the player truly have so divergent a view of what "good" is that this is intractable, this likely calls for some serious discussion, anyway.

The lack of alignment labels wouldn't resolve this issue, because it means that what one of them finds to be perfectly acceptable or even outright morally essential, the other finds to be reprehensible or at least something unimportant. This will impact the game whether you argue over the label or not, as one is going to be expecting vastly different things from the game than the other. If the DM thinks that in order to be proper heroes you have to do things the player thinks makes you a horrible person (or vice-versa), the player is going to have a hard time playing in that game.

Barring such extreme disagreements, the nuance around the edges can be worked out where it matters, or the player can shrug and let the DM state what his PC's alignment is if he doesn't actually care that much. (If the DM doesn't care that much, he can let the PC state his alignment and run with it for the mechanical hooks.)

But in general, I think everybody has at least broad strokes agreement what "good" and "evil" are, and what "order" and "chaos" are. THere's a lot of "I know it when I see it" involved, and if you ask about SPECIFIC actions, you can get argument, but in a broad strokes sense, people either won't care or will be able to come to some agreement.

All this concern over "it causes arguments" is really blaming the wrong thing. Those argument will arise without the alignment labels, as well. Just as often. They'll just use DIFFERENT terms.

[Tanarii]

If it's used solely by the player as a roleplaying aid, there isn't cause for arguments unless the DM wants to restrict the roleplaying space allowed in their campaign in regards to moral and social attitudes.

That's a common thing, but then it's on the DM to properly communicate their restrictions to the players. I agree that just saying "no evil characters" or "lawful characters only" probably isn't sufficient.

But descriptive post hoc isn't going to be a matter of "communication". Because it's literally a case of judgement. The DM has judged the player's already accomplished roleplaying. That's not the same thing at all. That's a recipe for argument.

[Lord Raziere]

But in general, I think everybody has at least broad strokes agreement what "good" and "evil" are, and what "order" and "chaos" are. THere's a lot of "I know it when I see it" involved, and if you ask about SPECIFIC actions, you can get argument, but in a broad strokes sense, people either won't care or will be able to come to some agreement.

All this concern over "it causes arguments" is really blaming the wrong thing. Those argument will arise without the alignment labels, as well. Just as often. They'll just use DIFFERENT terms.

Then we come back to the problem of alignment being superfluous, because everyone already knows what they're talking about instinctively, alignment is just reinventing the wheel with more arcane terms for a weird arcane cosmology. We don't need to bother. and Chaos STILL shouldn't even be apart of any system that can define it, because chaos should be against being defined enough to fit into anything.

at least without the labels we can discuss the actual problems rather than debating over whether it falls into some weird thing that has nothing to do with the actual factors, people and values that are at play. jargon is no substitute for clear communication and assessing what is actually happening.

[Telok]

Oh, heeeey. You lot remember the Neverwinter Nights D&D crpg? Ever try being a LN druid in that? I ended up mugging & killing random people in the street to maintain neutral on the good-evil alignment axis. Good thing they didn't implement the chaos-law axis.

Yeah, yeah, stupid and hilarious at the same time. But it's absolutely how the books portray alignment for a long long time. Even these days I've still seen people run it like that in games. Obviously they haven't done internet searches to find out how the group-mind wants them to use alignment. They just read D&D books.

Personally? I'd give it real mechanical weight or just drop it completely for some general character RP advice. Not going to happen though. It's too sacred cow to ditch and too clumsy/sloppy/open to interpretation for WotC to make it work.

[OldTrees1]

Then we come back to the problem of alignment being superfluous, because everyone already knows what they're talking about instinctively, alignment is just reinventing the wheel with more arcane terms for a weird arcane cosmology. We don't need to bother. and Chaos STILL shouldn't even be apart of any system that can define it, because chaos should be against being defined enough to fit into anything.

at least without the labels we can discuss the actual problems rather than debating over whether it falls into some weird thing that has nothing to do with the actual factors, people and values that are at play. jargon is no substitute for clear communication and assessing what is actually happening.

On the other hand, sometimes common vocab can help. It is rather hard to speak about morality without using the words moral, amoral, or immoral. Even if you are being nuanced and talking about the morally supererogatory, it is hard to escape the word moral.

Why do you feel the need to confine morality to a label?

A person's morality isn't as simple as saying they follow the law or not and are a good person or a bad person. It never is, and I'd never like to simplify down to such nonsense. Why use something that doesn't accurately represent it at all? Worse, why use to tell information TOO quickly? Again, Show don't tell. I refer back to my Han Solo example. some things are better left unknown until the right time.

Quick point of order: Han Solo's moral character being concealed until a reveal is orthogonal to the topic. In a system that deals with moral character, even to the point of it labeling the characters, that label does not need to be public knowledge. You can have your "show don't tell" and your "better left unknown until the right time" regardless of whether you have alignment or not.

Back to your interesting question: Does labeling morality confine it to a label? If I said Miko and O-Chul are both moral because one is overall moral with a fatal flaw and the other is a moral exemplar, did I confine their morality? I don't believe I did.

So rather than "why do I feel the need to confine morality to a label", a more apt question would be "why do you use a label?". I use the label as a summary of the more complex moral judgement of the character. How much summary is useful depends on context. Sometimes say both of them are moral is precise enough. Other times (see example above) I can break that down to more nuance. Or if I ever really need to be precise I can break it down even further to detailing the exact nature of each moral agent. So why do I use a label? For brevity when the situation calls for brevity.

Which is why I draw 3 conclusions:
1) A moral axis is a tool, it has uses, but it is not universally useful. You can ignore / replace it when it is not useful to you.
2) Themes of morality beget a moral axis. Alternative morality systems will result in a moral axis.
3) I thought this thread was about provide the OP with alternatives?

[Cluedrew]

Because by this point it's been played around with too much to give much abroad information. Once most mechanics behind it were removed it became harmless, but more Ideals do the job of alignment much better.

Yeah that makes sense. Another victim of D&D not changing enough for its changes.

Just what ideas does it get across? Certainly not much of what I wrote for "objective and approach", I'd imagine.

Write down the denotations and connotations of chaotic, there you go. No not all of them will be right and it will miss some points but that is what the rest of the description is for. Same could be said of any descriptive word like "frail", "female", "burned", "aggressive", "clever", "wizard" or how about "academic". Should we throw these words out because they are imperfect? You can but I would rather use them together to get the details across. Of course if

On The Topic: I would say it depends on system/setting and campaign. I would enforce anything unless it comes back to mechanics. I've been defending alignment here but I don't often use it as it doesn't always help, but it is a tool I have.* If you want a general tool to help people to figure out characters maybe pick a few significant questions, some general and some tailored to the campaign. On the other hand if you are trying to have something with mechanics then there is a lot of design that has to go into that.

* And other times I realize a character I have had for years is True Neutral and that actually clarifies some things about their story.

[Mechalich]

Humans categorize, it's one of our fundamental traits. Human-generated categories are necessarily imperfect, since with a small number of exceptions (like numeric integers) reality doesn't confine itself to the short of categories our African-savannah-survival optimized brains generate. That doesn't mean they are useless, but it does mean their utility is imperfect, and as some point if the category matching is sufficiently poor they may possess negative utility.

Alignment is not a good set of moral categories. It's dual-axis three zone system is counter-intuitive and confusing. Likewise, it's attempts at universality and the assignment of alien and often bizarre non-human viewpoints to points on the alignment chart lead to weird conundrums, and insofar as many authors did this in a cavalier and poorly-researched fashion creates extremely troubling definitional arguments regarding where different actions fall at points on the alignment chart.

Of course, moral categorization is difficult in the first place. When the people trying to develop such categories don't share the same moral definitions and hierarchies it becomes almost impossible. And the modern D&D play base simply does not share the same moral definitions, as any argument about 'was X evil?' will illuminate.

Personally I think alignment tries to do too much, but unfortunately the demands of D&D's kitchen sink nature more or less demand that it do so. D&D contains hundreds of different types of sapient beings with vast differences in biology, psychology, and sociology. Creating an all-encompassing moral framework for just human beings is already a daunting task - philosophy is still working on it - trying to handle the diversity of D&D, and doing so at a level 12-year-olds can understand...honestly alignment's a lot better than it has any right to be.

[OldTrees1]

Personally I think alignment tries to do too much, but unfortunately the demands of D&D's kitchen sink nature more or less demand that it do so. D&D contains hundreds of different types of sapient beings with vast differences in biology, psychology, and sociology. Creating an all-encompassing moral framework for just human beings is already a daunting task - philosophy is still working on it - trying to handle the diversity of D&D, and doing so at a level 12-year-olds can understand...honestly alignment's a lot better than it has any right to be.

Bolded to highlight section.

Hehe, yeah. Philosophy is still working on it and it might be an impossible task.

Although I would argue extrapolating it from "for just human beings" to "sapient beings with vast differences in biology" is a trivial step if the answer ends up in terms of "for moral agents and with regards to entities with moral standing, acknowledging the possibility of entities with moral standing that are not moral agents".
And it is likely to end up in those, or similar, terms.

However boiling that down to something a 12-year-old can understand, yikes. I would rather show not tell on that one.





@Nifft
Does it have to be an alternative morality system? Philosophy systems like MtG's color wheel can do interesting things without reverting to the moral axis.

[VoxRationis]

The Mythras system (and possibly RuneQuest, but I'm AFB on that one, so I'm not certain) has a system of passions that exist on the same scale and using the same mechanics as skills, such that they can be used as opposed rolls against Willpower checks in situations where one's personal inclinations run contrary to reason or can add to skills in such situations as one's passions align with tactical goals. Passions are customizable according to a variety of relationships and possible foci of those relationships.

Obviously, they do not represent a cohesive moral system, but I feel as though that is the point; they represent the factors that drive a character but do not necessarily map to broader moral systems, possibly driving them into conflict with society or even with themselves.

[Nifft]

@Nifft
Does it have to be an alternative morality system? Philosophy systems like MtG's color wheel can do interesting things without reverting to the moral axis.

If you have used MtG's color wheel as a mechanical replacement for the stuff that other games used Alignment to manage and represent, then talking about how you did so would be very much on-topic.

[OldTrees1]

If you have used MtG's color wheel as a mechanical replacement for the stuff that other games used Alignment to manage and represent, then talking about how you did so would be very much on-topic.

What do you mean by "for the stuff"? I am trying to understand which mechanical usage of alignment you are trying to replace.

I already mentioned how replacing morality with a more specific stand in might cause the moral axis to reappear. However that is an RP usage.

For allegiance systems, I don't understand that use case enough to give good advice. That has some mechanical usages like Protection vs Celestials. In Ravinca you could have each Guild be an allegiance. PCs would gain reputation with each guild (including negative reputation) and at certain reputations thresholds the PC would count as part of the Guild for certain effects and get some passive benefits? At certain negative thresholds they lose certain privileges. That is just a guess.

For descriptive personality tests, a test describing the PC's philosophic perspective on 10 different topics has some merit. But that is not a "mechanic".

So what are you trying to replace?

[Nifft]

What do you mean by "for the stuff"? I am trying to understand which mechanical usage of alignment you are trying to replace.

I mean the things that other games have used Alignment to manage and represent. Any of those things, really.

I already mentioned how replacing morality with a more specific stand in might cause the moral axis to reappear. However that is an RP usage.

RP mechanics are perfectly valid game mechanics.

Feel free to delve into that if you want.

[OldTrees1]

I mean the things that other games have used Alignment to manage and represent. Any of those things, really.

RP mechanics are perfectly valid game mechanics.

Feel free to delve into that if you want.

So the MtG color wheel is a personality test asking about the character's position on 5 different philosophic issues.
For example Dun the Dungeon Tour Guide:
Logic or Impulse: Dun tended to think things through rather than jump into danger. Chains of success wear down that caution but a single trap sprung would hammer in the value of caution for the next hundred. Dun shifts on this axis over time as they are naturally inclined towards Impulse but their job constantly reinforces the need for Logic.
Technology or Nature: Dun relies on specialized tools in their job of disarming high tech traps as part of their job of leading tour groups through artificial structures. Dun is so immersed in tech that they would not even recognize this as holding a position.
Parasitism or Interdependence: Dun chose a specialization that lets others rely on them and, in turn, lets them rely on others.
Amorality or Morality: Dun believes their ideal self is in the perfection of their craft rather than in moral perfection.
Chaos or Order: Dun has a series of guidelines that have saved their life or the lives of the tourists. That helps cement the value of rules for Dun.

[Kane0]

IMO you'd be better off with zodiac signs.

I realize you’re probably being facetious but i’m legit interested in how that would look.