Alignment Project, Part I

[Golem2176]

I am writning iup four new alignments: Chaotic Neutral Evil, Chaotic Neutral Good, Lawful Neutral Good and Lawful Neutral Evil.


Here is what I have so far:

Chaotic Neutral Good: A chaotic neutral good character does whatever he wants within the limits of what he feels is right. He isn’t devoted to always helping others, but he will help those in need if he thinks they might be of some good in his near future. People with this alignment will break only minor laws only if they know they can get away with it. Craoln, a rogue who helps and ignores others according to his needs is chaotic neutral good.

Chaotic neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means furthering your own goals without straying too far from what you feel is right.

Lawful Neutral Good: A lawful neutral good character does the best that he thinks he can do. He is devoted to helping himself. Personal order and honor are important to lawful neutral good characters, but only in so far as what it can do for them. Characters with this alignment put themselves first, even if it means hurting those he calls friends. These characters are usually boastful, liars, and think they are better than everyone else.

Lawful neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it combines doing what you think is good while trying to be honorable, but constantly failing at it.

I know I'm opening up a whole new can of worms by doing this, but I feel it allows for players to have some better choices than the standard stuff. Feel free to flail me, impale me, poke me and choke me for doing this, I would just like some feedback.

What do you guys think so far?

 

[Wolffenjugend]

It might be a lot easier for your players to understand if you simply have Lawful Neutral (Evil/Good). The word in brackets is the character's tendency (if it leans in a particular direction). When you start making Lawful-Nuetral-Good, it begins to devalue the whole system b/c it's hard to conceptualize where one begins and the others end.

Just my 2 cents...

 

[SylverFlame]

I toyed with the same idea a few years ago. It just complicates alignment further and prompted me to drop the whole alignment system for a few months. However, Wolffenjugend's idea never occured to me, but I do like it. It adds the extra element but avoids confusion by being like a qualifier in a sentance.

 

[CCamfield]

I don't like them that much.

Chaotic Neutral Good IMO isn't that different from chaotic neutral. There's nothing to stop a CN character from helping those who he thinks might be helpful in the future. That's pretty neutral, non-altruistic behavior which seems consistent to me with CN. Breaking minor laws if they think they can get away with it seems pretty minor, kind of neutral behavior.

Lawful Neutral Good isn't that lawful, in my opinion. "These characters are usually boastful, liars, and think they are better than everyone else" is a combination of chaotic behavior (lying) and personality traits which in my opinion are unrelated from alignment. Putting oneself first is a pretty selfish trait, which is a leaning towards CN. If order and honour are only important as long as they do the character good, there's not much commitment there...

Wolf's idea is pretty good.

At one point I tried to come up with a system of picking traits that which would determine your "average" alignment, so that a NG character might have a mixture of chaotic and lawful traits, or even a CN character might have a bit about them that was lawful or good.

e.g. "Benevolent (+2G), Vengeful (-1G), Independent (-1L), Honourable (+1L), Honest (+1L) = 1G, 1L. Neutral with lawful good tendencies."