Thursday, January 28, 2010

Alignment II: The Backpedaling

Well, that didn't take long.

Last night, after a long and satisfying Call of Cthulhu session, I came home with my brain firing on all cylinders and realized yesterday's post about alignment in basic D&D had some flaws. Foremost of which was that it wouldn't work.

Specifically, I'm talking about the very strict definitions I devised for Law and Chaos. While they make sense on a purely structural level, they're pretty much garbage as far as being used as motivations for characters to act upon. I mean, you could do a game that's about guys that like eternal permanence fighting guys that like absolute entropy, but it lacks a certain oomph. There's no real way to get involved in such a conflict, because neither side really stands for anything. They're just forces. It'd be like Gravity vs. Electromagnetism, or something. You could have it as a backdrop, maybe, but it'd be hard to get excited about either side.

So, yeah. Unless I can come up with something more workable from an RPG standpoint, I'd be better off just sticking with the original "Law good, Chaos bad" version, or just dropping alignment altogether, I think. Still, I guess it was a valuable avenue to explore, if only because it made me realize that the alternative I came up with wasn't the greatest.

Move along, nothing to see here.

7 comments:

  1. It might help to think of it as "Justice For All" vs. "Might Makes Right" instead of cosmic levels of order versus spontaneity or control versus freedom.

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  2. Right. Fundamentally, if you frame Law and Chaos that way, what you're ultimately talking about is Good vs. Evil, but I'm fine with that.

    I think there might be some mileage to gotten from the idea of having alignment be a sworn oath, though. If nothing else, it would make the idea of 'alignment languages' a bit less crazy.

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  3. I totally forgot about alignment languages.

    If you wanted to really narrow to a specific campaign you could have each class/alignment combo be of a the same guild/clan/organization/what-have-you. So, all Lawful Good Fighters are Knights of the Order of [blah], etc. Makes the game less open but could help flesh out the setting.

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  4. One take I've used on alignments is that they are essentially the auras of the gods. People who serve or fervently worship a god or gods has a little of their aura fall onto them. Each of them has a unique flavor, but they do have some similarities which can be measured as good/evil/lawful/chaotic. Those who aren't religious may have similar beleifs, but they don't have alignment for magical purposes.

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  5. Dump alignment - it's rubbish and serves no real purpose. It's not fun and the world doesn't work like that.

    Get the players to write down some goals/motivations. If they roleplay or act in a way that displays their motivations or work towards a goal - give them XP.

    Just make sure their goals/motivations are more interesting and less of a cheat than Get Rich or Kill As Much Stuff As Possible.

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  6. Well, get rich is a realistic Goal that real people have. Kill as much stuff as possible is not, it's a PLAYER motivation (because it's the quest for XP that drives it).

    But yeah, I'm all about Motivations over alignments. They can even be vague: Greed, Altruism, Vengeance, Pleasure, Power and so on. Must easier to latch onto for players, and more realistic as well.

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  7. I do like the Motivations or Vices & Virtues approaches suggested.

    Another idea: Avoid labels, and instead concoct a set of benchmarking questions or "fill-in-the-blank" items each player must complete.

    For example, "When Arthron corners an unarmed enemy, he will ..." or "When Cassiopeia encounters a street beggar, she will ..." Such an approach could provide very concrete examples of a character's character.

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