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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silveras" data-source="post: 2825289" data-attributes="member: 6271">SureThe principle is that I wanted the Players to define a personality first, and worry about alignment later. So, "Harry" (our hypothetical player) decides that his character is suspicious of strangers (a Lawful trait), impulsive (a Chaotic trait), never gives up (Hopeful, a Good trait), a little too eager for profit on any deal (Greed, an Evil trait), very loyal to the crown (Lawful), and very careful to watch the details and do a good job on anything he does (Diligent, a Lawful trait). Pulling out the spreadsheet, Harry starts filling in the numbers. The scale for mortals goes -15 to +15. On the Good/Evil axis, he finds the Hopeful/Despairing pair and assigns it a +5. (Harry is 1/3 as Hopeful as the most hopeful mortal saint). Then he finds the Charitable/Greedy pair and assigns it a -10 ... his character is REALLY interested in money. He only needs 2 Good/Evil trait pairs, so he can consider Good/Evil done. He adds the values together ... +5 + (-10) = -5, divided by 3 = -1.666. Morally, anything between -3 and +3 is Neutral, so he's Neutral with a slight evil bent. On the Lawful/Chaotic axis, he finds the pairs for Suspicious/Trusting, Deliberate/Reckless, Loyal/Treacherous, and Diligent/Slipshod; then assigns them numbers, too (+10, -5, +10, and +5, respectively). Adding those together, +10 + (-5)  +10 + 5 = 20, divided by 3 = +6.666. That's Lawful, and pretty strongly so. So now "Harry" knows what alignment his character is, and he has a pretty good idea of what that means. The character is a bit of a perfectionist, very loyal to his kingdom, a bit bigoted about those from other lands (extrapolating the Suspicious trait a bit). He works "off the cuff", but makes sure he covers all the details afterward. He's not above profiting from the misfortunes of others, and he remains confident even when it looks like things are falling apart. One of the keys to using the spreadsheet is that the DM in the campaing should decide what trait pairs s/he thinks exemplify Lawful/Chaotic and Good/Evil behavior. The pairs are assigned in the sheets on my site the way *I* view them. A DM could choose to add pairs, remove pairs, reverse them, or move them from L/C to G/E or vise-versa. For example, the Suspicious/Trusting pair is in the Lawful/Chaotic group, with Suspicious as the Lawful trait. It can certainly be argued that being Suspicious is a Chaotic trait, and being Trusting is Lawful. That's up to the DM to decide for his/her world and campaign.</blockquote>

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