Ampersand Sneak Attack: Alignments

[Mirtek]

Or maybe:

• Lawful Good
• Good
• Unaligned
• Evil
• Chaotic Evil

Any thoughts, suggestions?

I would much prefer:

• Chaotic Good
• Good
• Unaligned
• Evil
• Lawful Evil

 

[FourthBear]

I would prefer they dropped alignment altogether. But at least it sounds like it will be easy to ignore, since no game mechanics or effects will be built around it. Maybe 5e will finally kill it off. Please, oh, please let alignment not be a description of morality or ethics, but a cosmic dedication to something that may be highly associated with such. I had a brief moment of hope that the endless, pointless arguments about alignment definitions might actually die.

 

[TwinBahamut]

We know that the minis game uses Good, Evil, and Unaligned. We also know that something has changed with the definition of Chaotic.

Who knows? Going off of broader uses of the ideas of Order and Chaos, maybe it is like this:

Unaligned
Good
Lawful Evil
Chaotic Evil

Good is the state of balance and harmony, and evil is the state of either imbalance towards chaos or imbalance towards order.

 

[Tusz]

I'm not planning on using alignment much at all, but this will make it a bit easier to convince my group to make the switch. Not all of them take well to change, and a bit more familiarity will help a lot.

However, now that alignment's been divorced from mechanics, I think what divisions are there will matter a lot less, and it'll be a lot easier to change. Want to go good/evil/unaligned? Just ignore an axis. In my group, being able to put that little "CN" on his character sheet* means the world to one of my players \), so we'll probably stick with the 9-boxes system.

*Side note: did you know that CN is the abbreviation used by chemists to denote cyanide? Fun fact. Possible parallel to DnD characters, too, given how many times I've seen it used to mean "I'm going to do stupid stuff that will probably get me killed."

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

I've always thought that the concept of seeking balance was far better mapped to Good. Bad stuff happens when things are out of balance, and wanting bad stuff to happen is Evil. It's only because of the desire to fit things into a symmetrical framework that it got mapped to Neutral. Hopefully, since they're getting rid of unnecessary symmetry, this will also change in 4E.

I like the idea of the Feywild being actively Neutral, seeking a balance.

They like the Balance because lots of Drama in the mortal world is fun, and it would get boring if one side won. And powerful Fey hate nothing more than being bored.

Ken

 

[Irda Ranger]

Then what is "Unaligned" in this context, if not "Neutral?"

King & country? Halfling liberation? You still have motives, you're just not overly concerned with good and evil.


EDIT: just to clarify, I think that "Pro-Halfling liberation, Not-Concerned about Good/Evil" is very different from "Neutral". Adventures about "maintaing balance" are usually pretty borning. Who gets excited about the status quo/ I much prefer that the rules encourage PCs to be for something.

 

[MaelStorm]

I'm still holding out hope that it's a typo.

Me too!

 

[Voss]

Thats a terribly specific typo. 'rvil' would be a typo. This just indicates that alignment will be as annoying and headache inducing as ever (because people can't agree on what it means), but less common, with more things in the 'unaligned' category.

 

[Sphyre]

I just think it's:

Unaligned is an option. You haven't devoted or stuck yourself in any extreme.

Or you can do any of the classic alignments if you see your character/monster filling those shoes:

Lawful Good
Neutral Good
Chaotic Good

Lawful Neutral
True Neutral
Chaotic Neutral

Lawful Evil
Neutral Evil
Chaotic Evil

Since it's flavor, basically, the unaligned option is saying "I'd much rather role play my character and look back on what it was rather than put it in a box and try to role play a stereotype."

Stereotypes can be, for some people, a very strong starting point in trying to play their character how they envision them, while at the same time, being unaligned can free people up to not have people stereotype them and say it's uncharacteristic of their character.

Ultimately, I think it's the best of two worlds. Since you'll have the option of doing any of the 9 alignments or unaligned, whatever floats your boat.

 

[MaelStorm]

Maybe you're right.

But why have they changed their minis to Good, Evil, and unaligned?

In an interview the guy in charge of the minis said (they were talking about the combat system, I know) that they wanted to bring DDM2.0 to be as close as possible to 4E.

While with DDM1.2 they were having more alignment.

I know that DDM2 and D&D4E is two different thing, but it doesn't make any sense IMO.