Graphing Alignment

[Hriston]

Assuming a DM has a working definition of what the nine alignments mean to him or her in terms of types of activity, and that the players, if not in total agreement, are at least on-board with deferring to the DM"s judgment in this case, what method would you employ to chart, graph, or otherwise track how closely characters' behavior is to their professed alignments and to know when an alignment change may have taken place. I'm interested in adopting something like the method described by Gary Gygax, first in his article, "The Meaning of Law and Chaos in Dungeons & Dragons and Their Relationships to Good and Evil", Strategic Review #6, pp 3-5, and then in the DMG, p 24, under the heading, Graphing Alignment. I'd probably use the Character Alignment Graph that appears on p 119 of the PHB for this purpose, as Gygax suggests.

My question stems from the scant details Gygax give for the implementation of such a system. This thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?16043-Help-with-Alignment-Bookkeeping, raises some of the issues I have in mind, and contains some very good ideas, but rather that necro it, I've started a new thread to ask if anyone does this, or has done it in the past, and what methods they might use, and particularly with reference to this quote from the DMG:

...any major action which is out of alignment character will cause a maior shift to the alignment which is directly in line with the action, i.e., if a lawful evil character defies the law in order to aid the cause (express or implied) of chaotic good, he or she will be either lawful neutral or chaotic neutral, depending on the factors involved in the action.

It seems Gygax is suggesting a shift that moves the character's alignment as much as half-way across the chart for such a "major action". How would you characterize an action of such magnitude, and how would that differ from minor actions that would only cause the character to "drift around in an alignment area"?

 

[Celebrim]

How would you characterize an action of such magnitude, and how would that differ from minor actions that would only cause the character to "drift around in an alignment area"?

By way of example, in my current campaign, the PC's learned that one of the villains was mourning for the lost souls of his deceased children, who were now ghosts rather than having departed to a happy afterlife. Upon learning this, one of the players had his PC threaten the villain that he would hunt down the ghosts of his children, bind them, and torture them.

I told the player after the scene that he could no longer have 'good' on his character sheet.

In another case, a player had found an intelligent sword that compels anyone that welds it to always finish off any enemy that it comes into conflict with - no taking prisoners, no letting them get away. Of course, over time this means you are going to play executioner for a lot of different things that you could have shown mercy on. After failing to resist this or show any signs of not enjoying the compulsion for some time, I announced to the party (as I sometimes do) that everyone who had 'evil' on their character sheet could take a 20XP bonus (for advancing the cause), and then handed a note to the player that read, "In light of your recent actions, you may write evil on your character sheet if you want the bonus." He agreed with the reasoning, and changed his alignment.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

My question stems from the scant details Gygax give for the implementation of such a system.

My studious conclusion is that Gygax really had no idea what it was that he really had or what the game could or would be using it for. Heck, in the SR article referred to he pretty well admits as much. In the 3 LBB's for OD&D alignment was just law/chaos/neutral, but it had absolutely nothing to say about WHAT IT WAS. What was it for? The rules sure didn't tell you. The only way you could really figure it out is to have read Stormbringer/Elric - or were gaming with someone who had. Even in 1E [IMO] he didn't yet have it completely sussed out what to use it FOR and especially HOW to use it to accomplish... whatever it was FOR. He kind of talks about it like, "If you do so many actions of type X then you gain Y number of good/evil/chaos/law points and when you plot your current number on this graph that tells you what alignment the character is," but that's NOT how it really worked. For one thing EVERYBODY, then and now, has differing ideas of what it means to be lawful, or chaotic, or neutral... and what that actually MEANS for your PC if you are alignment XY, and more importantly what it means for the PC if they ACTUALLY CHANGE alignment to YZ.

I think what he was wanting it to do within the game really wasn't ever going to work well with his descriptions of tracking changes to it. It may even have taken him a couple of editions to finally nail down the whole concept. Or maybe he never would have touched it again. Who knows? As it was, he got ousted from the company and ever since there's been no real hope of seeing a genuinely useful vision of what it is, what to use it for, and HOW to use it. That, then, is for all of us to actually determine for ourselves.

I could give a detailed account of why tracking individual actions on a graph is a bad way to go about using alignment, but I'll just make the unsupported assertion for the moment. Since you're assuming "a DM has a working definition of what the nine alignments mean to him or her in terms of types of activity," and the players are willing to defer to the DM's judgment, then the DM doesn't need a detailed system to track individual actions - he can and should simply exercise that judgement that the players allow for. A few notes that a characters alignment IS changing (in which direction and WHY) is all that's necessary. Actually marking a point on a graph is only going to tell the DM what the OP assumes the DM already knows - he/she has working definitions of alignment and related actions. Doing too much of one or not enough of another tends to move you in the direction of some other alignment. When and why it ACTUALLY changes is still a judgement call. Trying to pinpoint it on a graph as it moves is actually counterproductive.

That's where I come down anyway.

 

[GMMichael]

It seems Gygax is suggesting a shift that moves the character's alignment as much as half-way across the chart for such a "major action". How would you characterize an action of such magnitude, and how would that differ from minor actions that would only cause the character to "drift around in an alignment area"?

Alignment isn't a bank account. You don't have pending transactions, and you definitely don't have an available balance. So there isn't, pragmatically, a major action or minor action.

After each session, the DM should decide if each PC acted within his alignment. If not, shift him one box (on the 3x3 table). If so, he stays where his character sheet says he is.

I recommend thinking of each PC (and humanoid, for that matter) as neutral with tendendcies toward a particular alignment. Show me the PC who hasn't done a good deed, or doesn't have a shadow of evil in his heart.

 

[Celebrim]

My studious conclusion is that Gygax really had no idea what it was that he really had or what the game could or would be using it for.

I think that is largely true. Certainly, I know from my own experience trying to make sense of the DMG, that I never really grasped where the author was coming from and why he was saying many of the things he was saying until I learned some things about the game as Gygax knew and ran it and had some context for the statements. And I never understood how wise it was until I was trying to run an ever changing cast of dozens of players weekly because I had no common experience.

There are huge sections of the 1e AD&D DMG that just really do not apply if the group is 3-4 players who are close friends meeting in their parents basement or over the dinner table.

There is so much in the text that is given out of context and a few things which I think are themselves speculative on the part of Gygax, as in, "If this is becoming a problem at your table, then you should probably handle it like this."

So, the question is, "Why would the damage mark on the graph what direction the alignment of a player is trending?", might well be answered with, "That player might not show up again for 3 weeks, and if you have 30 different players in the campaign, you'll need to make a record of these things in some sort of concrete way."