Alignment: Chosen or awarded?

[the Jester]

In between.

Alignment is determined by a creature's actions and philosophy (in that order).

When you make a pc and scrawl an alignment on the sheet, that's like your philosophical alignment, but no matter how dark you write "Lawful Good", if your actions tell the story that you're NE, you're NE.

 

[Li Shenron]

When you make a character, is alignment a choice you make or something based on your actions?

I've always played in games where alignment was chosen by the player at character creation, but during the campaign the alignment was typically under check, and your actions could change it. When I am the DM however I prefer to never force the change but rather talk it out with the player.

I would not be against trying a game where everyone starts from "unaligned" and eventually drifts towards a defined alignment based on your actions. In some way, the honor system in Rokugan campaign setting is an example of this (although you still get some choice on the starting honor score).

Generally speaking, I've always like alignment as something that helps you roleplay your character more like an actual person instead of just doing what is most efficient.

 

[Ahnehnois]

...Do you actually care about alignment?

No.

I don't like spells/abilities based on alignment. I'll let my players declare an ideal if they want, but I'm not a fan of the way it's implemented in the rules.

I much prefer the d20 Modern take, allegiances. Alignment is optional an open-ended. You declare an allegiance to an idea/organization/etc. if you want to, and you decide what you're aligning with.

I like the great wheel and the alignment subtypes. A demon is evil (and chaotic) not by choice or because of its actions but because it is a demon. That works for me.

 

[howandwhy99]

When you make a character, is alignment a choice you make or something based on your actions?

Alignment isn't character personality as I see it. Having a character personality is just plain fun, but there aren't any rules for who you're supposed to be. You can make wisecracks and still have a low charisma, right? And you can avoid playing stupidly or to your own detriment and still have low intelligence and wisdom scores. The scores represent the character's ability, not yours or any persona you'll be performing.

I like D&D when we can choose our PCs starting alignment, unless a class/race combo pretty much predetermines that. For instance, Paladin.

But I also expect Alignment to shift. To be finely detailed and tuned and for the DM to track this. Our actions matter and by allowing alignment to shift, then alignment is based on our actions too. That's a good thing in my book. Even if sometimes you lose a character to alignment shift. PC death happens too.

...Do you actually care about alignment?

Alignment is one of the most important Cleric stats, like HP & AC are to Fighters. However, all stats are important to all classes of characters. And since I like all the classes, yes, I care about alignment.

 

[am181d]

The problem with early versions of the D&D alignment system was that they tended to assume there were only 9 possible responses to any situation and that they would fit neatly into a three-by-three grid.

In a more realistic approach, there are a near infinite range of personalities that might be mapped to the grid, and you might see a wide range of behaviors all falling under Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral, etc. Two Lawful Evil characters might have little in common and respond completely differently to the same situation.

Similarly, there may be times when a Chaotic Evil character might behave in a way that's more Good or Lawful. That might be because the CE character has some moral exception (say to spare children) or more devious motives (sparing children to bamboozle a paladin). None of this requires an alignment shift, because the character's personality ON BALANCE hasn't changed.

The problems you run into come when the DM tries to micromanage ethics. There will always be black-and-white cases (e.g. the paladin who goes on a bloody rampage through town unprompted), but generally DMs should give players the benefit of the doubt that their characters' alignments are correct.

I know this goes against how alignment is written by-the-RAW in some editions, but alignment (like experience point gain) is one of the rules of the game that's best left arm-waived.

 

[Summer-Knight925]

If you were playing a game where there were no alignment based spells or abilities (like Rifts for example, or CoC if I remember correctly)

Would you still care?


Would you instead prefer to build your character's "morals" at their start, and then play as them, for roleplay?


Do you prefer alignment as a mechanic or as fluff?

 

[Hand of Evil]

...Do you actually care about alignment?

add-on to my older comment...

In D&D yes, it is part of the game, you have gods, spells and such that is based around the aligment system. This should be taken as part of the campaign mythos and as I said, taken with defining what is good and evil is in your game, you can create a lot of story and atmosphere.

 

[Razjah]

I don't like the alignment system, I don't think it properly covers how people behave. The idea has merit, but the implementation of the mechanic didn't work. Too often it is used as a crutch for role playing, and then ignored when it becomes troublesome for the player. But, I haven't seen a character driven game use alignment, so I may be looking at this the wrong way. I prefer the way Burning Wheel has no alignment system, but has Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits to help guide the player for decisions and the GM for creating situations to challenge the player.