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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9739718" data-attributes="member: 4937">So alignment is always separated from personality to a very large degree.  Mistaking alignment for personality is one of the most common mistakes of thinking about it.  I mentioned earlier the miserly shop keeper that pinched every penny, never gave store credit, and weighed every grain and charged for it as being an example of a personality that seemed to imply alignment but doesn't in fact, but we could have a longer discussion on that if necessary.  You can have personalities that are at odds with the stereotypical expectations of the alignment.  There is nothing wrong with an obsessively meticulous and organized CN for example, or a slovenly scatterbrained LN.  There might be internal tension between members of that alignment because the person isn't outwardly living up to the stereotype, but that is just interesting and not proof the person isn't of that alignment.However, even more interesting to me here is your double use of the word "alignment" to mean two things - allied with (or serving) and in congruence with (or exemplifying).  I firmly believe that "alignment" in D&D terms means the latter and while I agree with the idea that you aren't always serving your own alignment is interesting, I don't think it's necessary to even document that much less that that is the intention of alignment on the character sheet.  Belkar Bitterleaf is an evil little git, but he happens to be broadly allied with the good guys.  This does not make his alignment "Chaotic Good" just because he's working with team good.  Rather, for personal reasons of his own (and all of Belkar's reasons are personal reasons of his own) he just wants to spite certain groups or individuals and save the world for himself.  There is no reason why a CE individual should be naturally allied with other CE individuals, and indeed there is every reason for one CE individual to hate and fear above all others another CE individual because in their own mind those are the ones that "get it" and are hardest to trick, use, and exploit.  Those are the ones nearest to the top of the heap or who will make it to the top of the heap whom you'll end up in most competition with.  Likewise from the perspective of a deity, you can very much have pawns on the board that don't represent you or don't believe you or follow you who are nonetheless manipulated into doing your work whatever that happens to be.  A character could legitimately believe, "I'm doing this to serve myself" and only discover that not only did what they do not profit themselves, but in fact ended up ironically profiting others more than themselves.  That wouldn't be surprising and you wouldn't need to write that down on a character sheet even if you could imagine how to document that sort of complexity.Thus while I agree that the stories you want to see play out are interesting, I don't agree that that means alignment on the character sheet needs to refer to anything but the morals or ethos of the character.</blockquote>

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