D&D General So how about alignment, eh?

[BookTenTiger]

No. Gygax brought introduced it to D&D in 1974, inspired by Michael Moorcock's Elric stories. Originally the alignments were chaotic, neutral, and lawful.

I'd love to see a return to just these three alignments, but without the idea that lawful = good and chaotic = evil. Take good and evil out of it, and keep the lawful, neutral, and chaotic.

It would be really fun for some celestials and some devils to have the same alignment!

 

[Reynard]

Chapter 3 of The Elusive Shift is really interesting and informative regarding alignment and what people early in the hobby thought of it. The tl;dr version is "they argued about it back then as much or more than we argue about it now."

 

[Krachek]

I prefer to use « personal motivations » as a key to build Npc or PC.
and to depict how a character is seen by others I use « reputation « for character driven by results, and « honor » for character driven by moral code.

 

[Oofta]

I prefer to use « personal motivations » as a key to build Npc or PC.
and to depict how a character is seen by others I use « reputation « for character driven by results, and « honor » for character driven by moral code.

Alignment will always be a crude tool for describing a character, it's vastly oversimplified like most of D&D. But (and not not picking on you specifically, this is a common idea) if you have a set of traits and you want them to apply broadly, eventually you're going to come up with a set list of motivations. Those motivations have to be agreed upon and codified, probably given an abbreviation.

To me, alignment does that in a simplified fashion. Good vs Evil? Self-sacrifice and altruism vs Self-Centered and cruel. Law vs Chaos? Rules and external order vs judgement calls and internally directed. We just combine those different motivations into a single chart.

In the end to me alignment, or any other system, is just a guideline for roleplaying which in 5E is supplemented by traits, ideals, bonds and flaws.

 

[the Jester]

I use a mix of the classic nine and the 4e version of unaligned, where it covers most people. Having an alignment is a choice.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Alignments are factions that form around parties and facilitate competitive, massively mutiplayer offline open-table play. Ergo:
• If the campaign has only one party, there is no use for alignment.
• If the campaign has two parties, or two broad factions that the parties in the game might generally align themselves with, the classic L–N–C axis is perfect.
• The traditional two-axis, nine-alignment system will have you covered for up to eight factions (True Neutral isn't a faction, it's the category for characters and creatures that might loosely join any faction without being totally loyal to it). I wouldn't use it myself unless I was looking at a huge campaign, the proverbial "50 players and 3 co-referees" kind of deal.
• I can't really imagine a practical situation where more than eight factions (i.e. stable adventuring parties who are all at odds with and competing with each other) are operating within the same campaign milieu all at once. So I see no need to ever add a third alignment axis.

 

[Fifinjir]

Well, what I want to say is the Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos are fundamental aspects of existence and an entity’s spiritual anatomy, where doing Lawful things will put more Law in your soul which in turn makes you want to do more Lawful things. The alignments are also “contagious” in a sense, we’re a town or nation can have an alignment when that alignment works not just through the individuals, but the overall zeitgeist of that place.

But I have no idea how to actually make this work in a campaign.

 

[Clint_L]

Note that a ton of RPGs don't have anything like an alignment system and it isn't really missed. I don't use it in D&D and it isn't missed. Even my extra-planar entities are not "lawful good" or "chaotic neutral" or whatever.

I see it as a very contrived way to get players to think about morality at a superficial level, and to create factions for gaming purposes. I think the former was never particularly effective or necessary, but the latter can be kind of a fun contrivance, as long as you don't mind accepting someone else's assumptions about "good," "evil," etc., at least while playing a fantasy game.

Ultimately, I'm not too fussed about alignments.

 

[niklinna]

The only alignment chart I'll ever need.

View attachment 274018

I notice there is not a single genuinely Italian style pizza on that chart. So really, you could compress this entire chart down into the bottom right corner.

Also what about Chicago & Detroit style? I could go on!

 

[Redwizard007]

Well, what I want to say is the Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos are fundamental aspects of existence and an entity’s spiritual anatomy, where doing Lawful things will put more Law in your soul which in turn makes you want to do more Lawful things. The alignments are also “contagious” in a sense, we’re a town or nation can have an alignment when that alignment works not just through the individuals, but the overall zeitgeist of that place.

But I have no idea how to actually make this work in a campaign.

Check out the Planescape setting. It is right up your alley