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

[jdrakeh]

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.

I didn't specifically mention it, though this was dancing through my head when I typed my above response.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

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

I don't think my group would go for this......ever. When you have a 10 player, 1 GM type of group, people start to do some weird stuff, but I think not one of them would want to have an alignment they might have a problem with.

 

[maggot]

ANY randomness in character creation is enough to get me to walk from a campaign

Either that's a lot of hyperbole, or you have far more options in campaigns than I do.

As for the original poster, I would definitely give it a try. Why not, could be fun? Then again I'm a player that likes trying out new things. Trying to make sense of a random personality trait would be challenging at least, and might turn into something really cool.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Either that's a lot of hyperbole, or you have far more options in campaigns than I do.

Nah, that's just a reflection of point buy, max hit points at level 1 and a standardized amount of cash. I suspect there are a lot of modern players for whom randomness in character creation is ancient history.

 

[WayneLigon]

It might be fun for a one-shot, or pick-up beer-and-pretzels game, but not for anything serious or long term. I wouldn't like a major portion of my character's personality rolled randomly.

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

I picked up a cool set of dice from the Chessex table at Dragon*Con... 6-sided alignment dice. Once six sider has the ethical axis (Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic), the other has the moral axis (Neutral, Good, Evil). I also picked up a class die and a race die.

Ultimate easy totally random generation!

 

[Seeten]

Only way I would ever even consider something like this is if evil alignments were also on the die roll.

 

[Li Shenron]

What would happen if players had to ROLL for their alignment?

Ever see those players who always seem to play the same character (themself) and have never been forced to think outside the box? Would they have a conniption and suddenly turn into rainman?

What would happen?

Thoughts?

On the very first time I even played a RPG in my life (which I think it was a reprint of OD&D), the DM wrote alignments on lots of little pieces of paper, and we picked one randomly. However the whole game was very much a dungeon crawl with little to no roleplay at all, so it didn't really make any difference.

I think that once in a while being forced to play a character with something randomly determined can be definitely FUN. Even class or race could be rolled, it could be nice if for example a spellcaster-lover would have to adapt to play a fighter-type (or viceversa) for a session or for an adventure.

But alignment definitely has a problem in putting all character together. The problem is in the group, not the individual. You can't really last long with a group of good & evil characters, unless you actually pretend to ignore their differences, or you run scenarios with the least amount of moral decisions (in which case it probably means you could actually play completely without alignments).

It can be done, but I think it would last one or two adventures at most.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Like some others, I'm not sure it'd work so well as a campaign, but could make a fun one shot?


Morrus used something quite a lot like that as a short interlude in a high level planar hopping game. Was on a heavily chaotic plane IIRC.

Each day, when you slept, you had to roll randomly to find out what your alignment was and what your character thought they could do.

The party was ~18th level, the challenges we faced were ~5th level. Which was oddly about right...

 

[interwyrm]

It would be fun only if evil were on there.
d10
1.LG
2.NG
3.CG
4.LN
5.TN (Balance)
6.CN
7.LE
8.NE
9.CE
10.TN (Uncaring)

Or, alternatively, use the distributions for city population. I can't remember exactly, maybe something like
60% lawful, 30% neutral, 10% chaotic
60% good, 30% neutral, 10% evil?

It would be fun

Part of the reason is that I find myself falling into playing myself all of the time. I am an actor though, and if I have a predefined set of characteristics to play, I can do it quite well.