NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 7182108" data-attributes="member: 6688937">I would actually advise against it in most cases and to tread lightly when you do. Its far too easy to cast fiction in the light of multiple mechanics.  Even within D&D there are multiple interpretatations of what levels and classes various famous characters are. (I've seen Merlin as wizard, druid, various multiclasses. Aragorn as anything from Ranger to Paladin to multiclass wreck.)The best you can hope for with a typical rpg is a mild emulation of the tropes and trappings in genre. Authors have too much advantage over game designers and GMs when it comes to things like good and evil or the nature and function of magic.In the example cited in this thread, a character in a story can be "good" simply because the author says so. Its a bit circular, but the since the author gets to say what the grail does AND what the character does, the author gets to define "good" through literary device. That's not really comparable to using a "mechanic" like we do in rpgs. (Unless you're trying to use your game to beat up on your players' contrary views of morality.) Generally, this is where alignment tends to fail as a mechanic because things like "lawful" are so poorly-defined and things like "good" are so subjective that its next to meaningless. If I wanted to somehow enforce or measure player morality, I'd want something more specific than alignment. Enforcement would probably come in the form of XP, taking the place of the current system or possibly Inspiration depending on how much I'd want to encourage it. So, rather than "LG", I might have a player pick three defining ethics like "Gain XP/Inspiration whenever you put yourself at risk to defend the innocent." and "Gain XP/Inspiration whenever you endure suffering because of your religious convictions." and "Gain XP/Inspiration whenever you donate a magic item or treasure worth at least 500gp/your level to the church." That would give me a far clearer picture of what this character is about.Just my two cents.Sent from my LG-TP450 using <a href="http://r.tapatalk.com/byo?rid=93205" target="_blank">EN World mobile app</a></blockquote>

Verification