Rolling for Alignments..Rain-man players have a conniption!

[Mark CMG]

What would happen?

The game will probably be primarily about the alignment differences in the party.

 

[lukelightning]

I don't get the Rainman connection either. Is that an insult towards players who don't want their behavior mandated by the DM?

 

[delericho]

What is considered a "fortuitous" set of alignments?

A set that happens to work well together. Chances are, we'd end up with one LG character and three CNs, and that's just a recipe for disaster.

The problem is, a set of alignments I would consider using longer-term would essentially be equivalent to "what I would have chosen anyway", which makes rolling rather pointless.

 

[Sejs]

I think it's that he's saying players would turn into agitated men with advanced autism. :\

Ah... I see.

How droll.

 

[Sejs]

Here's a dumb idea for forcing players to move to a humanocentric-lower magic party makeup (of course, less choice means NOT campaign length adventure):

ROlling for Race class and alignment points. 2d3+2 (4-8 points). Leftover points can be added to ability score point buy.

Major Campaign Alignments for PC's:
Lawful alignment: 1 point
Neutral alignment: 2 points
Chaotic alignment: 3 points
Lesser Alignment
Good alignment: 1 point
True Neutral alignment: 1 point
Evil alignment: 3 points

Race:
Human: 1 point
Non-human: 2 points

Class:
Fighter, Rogue, Barbarian or Ranger: 1 point
Cleric, Wizard or Sorcerer: 2 points
Psion or other wierdo class: 3 points
Paladin: 4 points

*shrug* It would be a possibility. Much better to just man up and tell your players: here is the general campaign theme, let's work together to make characters that fit the proposed setting.

Easier that way to integrate backstory and avoid throw-away wacky-character syndrome, too.

Communication trumps mechanical shoehorning or trying to appeal to a player's sense of greed to get them to play a particular type of character.

 

[kenobi65]

Would your players/fellow players have a COW if you did this?

Some would. No, let me rephrase that...*most* would.

Some of my players are only comfortable in their box (Bob *always* plays a wizard, for example). Forcing them to get out of their box would only serve to decrease their enjoyment of the game, and they might very well quit, or, at least, continually sulk.

Others would strongly resent having the DM impose that level of stricture on their character choice. Again, it'd decrease their enjoyment of the game, and they might very well quit, or regularly complain.

I have a very few players who enjoy changing things around drastically with each new character, and they might get into this.

Esp. for an ongoing campaign, I'd never do something like this.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I might do it for a one-shot Gygaxian dungeoncrawl game.

For a campaign? You're kidding, right? ANY randomness in character creation is enough to get me to walk from a campaign, especially a core D&D one in which alignment was considered worth rolling for.

 

[jdrakeh]

For a one-off game session or a con game, this might be fun. That said, randomly sticking players with characters thay they will likely have absolutely no interest in playing for the duration of a campaign will. . . well, I'm guessing the campaign won't last very long.

 

[Drawmack]

No one even mentioned the fact that some classes have alignment restrictions. So if someone wants to play a Paladin but rolls the wrong alignment they have to go with a different class then they wanted to play.

If you're going to go this far it may be better to just have the players trade character sheets for one session.

 

[Mycanid]

I'll agree with the one-session sorta thing. Although I guess the pc's could be railroaded to tough it out together for some reason ... like "you are all teleported into ______ " and you have to get out somehow....

But it could get REAL old real fast.

I like these kind of ideas, though, and would try it out, at least.