D&D General The History of Alignment: Why D&D Has the Nine-Point Alignment System 4 UR Memes

Thats the nut to crack. A lot of folks are uncomfortable with an evil character like an assassin. Or the idea that an evil character has to kick every puppy and steal every babies' candy or turn in their evil card. Additionally, you have folks that think every action works like a meta math problem. Every time you slaughter babies, you can just donate to an orphanage to balance out kind of thing.

Of course, there are also make the paladin fall type GMs that place trolley dilemmas into every adventure. When I run 3E/PF1 I have players consider what alignment they want to select and then im fairly hands off. An obvious pattern needs to arise before I as GM step in. Like a good character with a taste for torture and killing. That wont hold up. However, I dont force changes for trying moments that a player has to deal with. Doing something very much out of alignment could be a great RP moment. Is this the turning point of a new arch for the character? Or maybe its just one of their darkest days? Perhaps an epihany that changes their life? I put that in the player's hands and alignment can be a great guide for such occasions.

Otherwise, whatever you pick and stick with will follow you. Probably 60-75% of the time it isnt going to matter. Though, sooner or later planar war spills over and you are likely to find yourself effected by traps, spells, weaponry designed to target folks of certain alignment.

In Ravenloft they eventually quantified evil actions for making powers checks (which were pretty fundamental to the setting). I didn't agree with all the choices they made (for example, torture is still torture regardless of how you are using it against in my mind). But this chart was actually handy for handling some of those Paladin questions if you needed a hard and fast answer in the AD&D alignment system: I still tended to prefer the more open approach prior to this chart but I did often find this one useful):
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i'd wish that we could get an implementation of alignment where your character's is meaningful to the game, however the main issue is that if you want to do alignment properly character's actions should influence their alignment and ultimately people will disagree over interpretations or judgements of character's actions. you can't just say Good is benevolence, Evil is callous, Lawful wants structure and Chaotic wants liberty, because even if your good character decides needs of the many is in play there's always someone else who will decry them as being evil for being willing to sacrifice someone.
I think that you could, but I would tie Alignment into its original conception so that Alignment is about the cosmic forces you are aligning yourself with instead of just being MBTI. I think that it would be easier to develop a workable version of alignment from that sort of framework.

So Alignment becomes more about your character actively furthering the causes and goals of these cosmic forces instead of getting in protracted arguments with your GM about whether a "lawful" character must follow all laws or if, as per payn, "evil" characters must kick every puppy and steal every baby's candy.

However, much like @payn says, I would potentially not have it be so strictly about morality or the GM policing behavior. If you want something more like moral codes, then one could adopt something like Anathemas from Pathfinder 2 such that various alignments may have their own codes of conduct, with players being able to take up to two Alignments so long as they are not opposed.
 

i'd wish that we could get an implementation of alignment where your character's is meaningful to the game, however the main issue is that if you want to do alignment properly character's actions should influence their alignment and ultimately people will disagree over interpretations or judgements of character's actions. you can't just say Good is benevolence, Evil is callous, Lawful wants structure and Chaotic wants liberty, because even if your good character decides needs of the many is in play there's always someone else who will decry them as being evil for being willing to sacrifice someone.
My personal solve to this is to make alignment less personality and more cosmic association. Whether by choice or by circumstance, those who are aligned have a relationship with the force they're aligned with. Being evil aligned might not mean that you do bad things. In fact it might be the opposite. Perhaps you're a tiefling whose distant ancestor has taken an interest in you. Maybe you live under a curse. And on the other side, someone who is good aligned might have inherited a great task left unfinished through no action of their own. Or maybe they did help someone once, and it was a celestial being that decided to watch and occasionally test them from then on.

A good example of an evil aligned character under this system would be Constantine from the movie of the same name. The devil has a claim on his soul when he dies, and every action he takes in defiance of that fate only makes the devil's interest in him grow. Constantine is cynical and bitter, but chooses to fight evil, and it is both fate and choice that define him as a character.
 

A good example of an evil aligned character under this system would be Constantine from the movie of the same name. The devil has a claim on his soul when he dies, and every action he takes in defiance of that fate only makes the devil's interest in him grow. Constantine is cynical and bitter, but chooses to fight evil, and it is both fate and choice that define him as a character.
I would also add a lot of characters in Moorcock's Multiverse sometimes served cosmic forces that would otherwise seem opposed to their respective personal moral compasses. Maybe you aren't all that "chaotic" in terms of your demeanor and behavior, but you just happen to serve the forces of Chaos.
 

I think that you could, but I would tie Alignment into its original conception so that Alignment is about the cosmic forces you are aligning yourself with instead of just being MBTI. I think that it would be easier to develop a workable version of alignment from that sort of framework.

So Alignment becomes more about your character actively furthering the causes and goals of these cosmic forces instead of getting in protracted arguments with your GM about whether a "lawful" character must follow all laws or if, as per payn, "evil" characters must kick every puppy and steal every baby's candy.

However, much like @payn says, I would potentially not have it be so strictly about morality or the GM policing behavior. If you want something more like moral codes, then one could adopt something like Anathemas from Pathfinder 2 such that various alignments may have their own codes of conduct, with players being able to take up to two Alignments so long as they are not opposed.
while that is a valid approach that is easier to implement and playable with less subjective interpretive conflict it is personally not how i would prefer to implement alignment, to me it feels like a halfhearted attempt as it's more or less just factions with a different coat of paint IMO.

and honestly i don't think it would really reduce the amount of 'but i must kick the puppy' it would just shift the justifications from 'i must do it because i am evil' to 'i must do it to further the agenda of the evil faction'
 


while that is a valid approach that is easier to implement and playable with less subjective interpretive conflict it is personally not how i would prefer to implement alignment, to me it feels like a halfhearted attempt as it's more or less just factions with a different coat of paint IMO.
I tell you how I would implement it according to my preference and you throw it back in my face as being "halfhearted"? Rude.

and honestly i don't think it would really reduce the amount of 'but i must kick the puppy' it would just shift the justifications from 'i must do it because i am evil' to 'i must do it to further the agenda of the evil faction'
It very much depends on how you do it. I don't envision kicking puppies as something that would further the agenda of demons; however, corrupting angelic shrines and killing celestial emissaries would.
 

I would challenge that interpretation. For both Moorcock an Zelazny, It's not as simple as law=good, chaos=evil. In both cases, there are negatives to law (stagnation, intolerance) and positives to chaos (freedom, change). They was the whole reason they didn't just call them good and evil. And for both authors, the ultimate "good" is in finding a balance, and the ultimate "evil", either, taken to extremes. Amber may represent law, but it is clearly not good, and the 1st person narrator is at pains to point out that they initially are not a good person. "Oh, I just got thousands of soldiers killed, but at the time I felt no remorse" (not an exact quote).
precisely so
 

I just have no use for the personality/morality aspect of alignment. It is utterly crap tool for modelling such, you can do much better just describing your character's outlook with a few words. The Moorcockian cosmic struggle, where you align yourself with unearthly forces can be compelling, though even there we could have countless different cosmic arrangements that would not map to D&D's alignment. But law vs chaos certainly is common in both mythology and literature, so as cosmic struggles go, it is a decent one.
 
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