Gaming Without Alignment

[The Other Librarian]

Just starting a pbp here that uses the UA taint rules instead of alignment. Havent got past character creation yet, but we'll see how it goes.

 

[RainOfSteel]

I've completely ignored alignment since Dragon #101, when I read the article, "For King and Country."

PC motivations are ruled by loyalties to family, friends, country, and religion. If they betray one, it works just like it does in the real world (Oaths, however, often have the force of magic protecting them, providing a consequence to befall an oathbreaker, so some promises are not broken lightly).

Good and Evil are defined by a limited set of each religion's "enemy list". Beings on the enemy list detect as evil, are subject to smite and circles, etc.

The results have been mixed. Some PC didn't miss it, some PCs were sort of lost without it.

 

[Turanil]

Extremely similar to the post above, I use Allegiances rather than alignments. Allegiances are not a houserule but come from d20 Modern. Allegiances include Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, in addition to allegiances to the King, Knighthood Order, Church of Blahblah, Guild of Yadayada, etc. Note that one can have a maximum of three allegiances, but many people don't have any allegiances at all. As such, a paladin must obligatory have allegiance to Law and Good, plus maybe to a Church or a Knighthood order. A person who roasts a baby for dinner automatically has allegiance to evil, even if pretending and believing otherwise.

For me, this allegiance system is far superior to alignments. It is more flexible, includes the traditional alignments if need be, but can also include other considerations.

 

[Merlion]

I ignore the law/chaos aspect (these as portrayed in D&D are simply personality traits and purely the realm of roleplaying).

Good and Evil are always going to be around. Removing them would require some restructuring in D&D (especially for Paladins and Clerics). But then Good and Evil are generally not problematic.

I also dont really believe in the concept of sentient beings being morally "neutral". Most of what D&D calls Neutrals (regular decent everyday people) are actually Good.

To me many of the "Neutral" aligned outsiders are actually Evil (Formians and Slaadi in particular I would consider evil).

 

[Tonguez]

If you look at the list given in the Detect Evil spell as per the SRD it is very specific as to what is detected viz

Evil creature (HD)
Undead (HD)
Evil outsider (HD)
Cleric of an evil deity* (class levels)
Evil magic item or spell (caster level)
* Some characters who are not clerics may radiate an aura of equivalent power. The class description will indicate whether this applies

an Evil Creature is one with an Evil Descriptor eg Dread Naga, Huge Abberration (Evil)
Clergy are defined by the diety they worship (so if you worship a CG god you are CG)

every other alignment effect works in accordance with this list - so a Paladin can smite creatures with the Evil descriptor, undead, evil outsiders and clerics of an evil diety BUT they can not smite orc babies...

Blasphemy is designed to effect Good Outsiders, clerics and anyone carrying a good magic item - it will not stop our hero from going in and slapping around the forces of darkness with a non-aligned +2 Sword of Champions (although he may not feel entirely welcome)

 

[shilsen]

If you look at the list given in the Detect Evil spell as per the SRD it is very specific as to what is detected viz

an Evil Creature is one with an Evil Descriptor eg Dread Naga, Huge Abberration (Evil)

No. An evil creature, for the purposes of the detect evil spell (which nowhere mentions it being a creature with the Evil descriptor), is any creature with an evil alignment. This was clarified in the FAQ, IIRC.

 

[Li Shenron]

Is the game better or worse for lack of alignment restrictions?

I imagine it would be a little difficult to run a game without the alignment rules because it seems (at least to my way of thinking) to me that the D20 rules are greatly influenced by alignment and its effects.

I read somewhere that the Unearthed Arcana (which I do not own) features rules for gaming without alignment, is this true?

Without alignment restrictions you are going to probably have less character railroading and less in-game arguments about alignment issues, such as people complaining "you cannot do this, you're lawful!", which are good things.

As a DM you have to decide what to do with all the spells, powers and magic items related to alignment. You could simply remove all the stuff from the game but it's not very much fun. A simple solution is to keep alignment valid for extreme creatures only, such as outsiders or religious-oriented character.

A more sophisticated idea would be to use a sort of "floating alignment": your PC will not be capital Good/Evil but when they commit a Good/Evil act they would temporarily gain the alignment for the purpose of spells and effects.
As an example, someone who has committed a murder (or who's going to commit a murder - a'la Minority Report ) would have an evil aura for a while (days, weeks... up to the DM) and a Paladin would be probably able to track him down, without registering hundreds of evil NPCs with the Detect Evil ability.

There is a possible drawback with an alignment-free setting, that some players whose gaming is more interested in tactics rather than RP may feel somewhat entitled in playing boring characters completely driven by their own interests (and totally indifferent towards any ethics). While this sort of characters are legitimate, they are boring after a while.

 

[Li Shenron]

I read somewhere that the Unearthed Arcana (which I do not own) features rules for gaming without alignment, is this true?

BTW, the subject is not covered by UA...

 

[Tonguez]

No. An evil creature, for the purposes of the detect evil spell (which nowhere mentions it being a creature with the Evil descriptor), is any creature with an evil alignment. This was clarified in the FAQ, IIRC.

Actually the spell mentions alignment only once and thats the effect the aura has on creatures with good alignment! absolutely NOWHERE in the spell is evil alignment mentioned.

Also if a creature with the Aquatic descriptor is an Aquatic Creature then doesn't it make sense that an Evil creature has an Evil descriptor?

but if its in the FAQ oh well, I'm sticking with my interpretation for my gaming purposes (and anyone else wanting to play sans alignment is welcome to use it too)

 

[The Amazing Dingo]

I've noticed in my games that very few NPCs are truly "Evil". Most of the bad guy NPCs aren't quite evil...they're unscrupolous and immoral and greedy but not evil.

To this end, I tend to give a vague description of my Paladin PC's Detect Evil ability. I usually don't make it as simple as "he's not too bad" or such, but I do tend to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of evil in my head and then try to describe it in a general manner: 1 being he might steal something small or minor when it hurt no one and he wouldn't get caught to a 5 of stealing even with that risk and in greed to a 10 of stealing from his mother and then stealing his mother to sell her into slavery.

Of course, when she does run into Evil in the sense of true evil (demons, devils, and some other beasties) there is no question to any of those bearing witness that the beast is evil. Of course, if the baddie is polymorphed, the Detect Evil sees through it.