Alignment

[luminance]

Digging through some files, I happened to find this. I didn't write it, but I think it's really cool!

A quick and easy way to describe the Alignments: each part of an alignment has a phrase that goes with it. String them together for an extremely rough way to describe behavior.
Lawful - In accordance with the strictures of a higher power or system...
Neutral - In a logical and balanced way...
Chaotic - By whatever means necessary...

Good - ...improve the situation of innocents and decent people.
Neutral - ...maintain balance and justice.
Evil - ...increase your own power and improve your situation.

Super easy way to understand alignment-based motivations!

[Adament]

I like this.

Waas

[Tiramisu]

Slightly different take, pulled from the last two editions of D&D:

The third edition D&D rules define good and evil as follows:

Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others.

Evil implies harming, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient or if it can be set up. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some malevolent deity or master.

People who are neutral with respect to good and evil have compunctions against killing the innocent but lack the commitment to make sacrifices to protect or help others. Neutral people are committed to others by personal relationships.

In 4th ed. They simplified things down a bit to the following:

Lawful Good: Civilization and order.
Good: Freedom and kindness.
Unaligned: Having no alignment; not taking a stand.
Evil: Tyranny and hatred.
Chaotic Evil: Entropy and destruction.

I think this change gets rid of a lot of the alignment confusion people had. It also makes good and evil very black and white choices. Those who are fond of shades of grey have the neutral / unaligned territory to play around in.

[KrisButt]

I wouldn't equate evil with killing and hatred as good characters hate and kill as well. It's reasoning and motivation more than anything, at least in my opinion, because people aren't static, black/white defined. Evil-aligned make positive and 'nice' decisions just as good aligned can make negative and 'cruel' decisions. Neutral tend to stray towards both sides?

I think that initial pairing quote is kind of accurate, actually. It leaves a lot of room for dynamics while getting the basic gist of things.

[SteveMaurer]

The real problem with AD&D alignments is that they try to impose a simplistic mold onto very complicated sets of morality. And that's just the Good/Evil scale. The Law/Chaos bit was made by Arneson completely out of whole cloth, only for D&D, which is why so many people have such difficulty portraying it.

It is made harder by the fact that AD&D PCs are, to just about every culture other than their own, pure evil. Their entire existence revolves around invading foreign lands, stealing from somebody else (treasure out of chests, houses, bags, and whatever else isn't nailed down), and if anyone gets upset at this trespassing, massacring and looting entire villages of sentients - largely because they are not the exact same species as the PC-approved ones.

In fact, this was why the AD&D morality system was invented - so as to disguise the basic immorality of normal game play. Place the magic marker of "evil monster" on something, and suddenly traveling to their home to massacre and loot them becomes okay. And this made the game tremendously popular, because teenage-DMs did not have to think too hard: just set up monsters to attack, completely inappropriate loot for them to drop ('inside the belly of the giant snake, you find five readable scrolls'), and you're done. Hey, I just rolled a wondering monster!

However, as happened with Avlis's Starving-Humans vs Invaded-Elves, more complicated situations where both sides feel they're in the right always feel far more realistic, and thus more compelling. That's why all other RPGs of the same era eschewed overarching alignment. Runequest's Glorantha was largely Romanesque Moon Worshippers vs Germanesque Barbarians, as its main set piece, with no one being purely good. Tekumel was a fantasy Indonesian setting where all magicians largely got their power from making bargains with demon lords. Call of Cthluhu did have evil - but evil always won in that game; PCs were lucky to just survive. Paranoia was "evil as black comedy".

So the unrealistic simplicity of AD&D may be easier, but it will always lead to "alignment confusion", because the concept that "I'm 100% good, this killing I do is only what I have to do" is almost always a hallmark of someone who is deeply deeply evil.

My fame, if Providence preserves my life, will consist in ... works of peace, which I still intend to create. But I think that if Providence has already disposed that I can do what must be done according to the inscrutable will of the Providence, then I can at least just ask Providence to entrust to me the burden of this war, to load it on me. I will beat it! I will shrink from no responsibility; in every hour which ... I will take this burden upon me. I will bear every responsibility, just as I have always borne them... Thus the home-front need not be warned, and the prayer of this priest of the devil, the wish that Europe may be punished with Bolshevism, will not be fulfilled, but rather that the prayer may be fulfilled: "Lord God, give us the strength that we may retain our liberty for our children and our children's children, not only for ourselves but also for the other peoples of Europe, for this is a war which we all wage, this time, not for our German people alone, it is a war for all of Europe and with it, in the long run, for all of mankind.

~Adolph Hitler

[Ronan]

It is made harder by the fact that AD&D PCs are, to just about every culture other than their own, pure evil. Their entire existence revolves around invading foreign lands, stealing from somebody else (treasure out of chests, houses, bags, and whatever else isn't nailed down), and if anyone gets upset at this trespassing, massacring and looting entire villages of sentients - largely because they are not the exact same species as the PC-approved....

Alignment discussions are dangerous


This.

The oddity about the D&D alignments in the book is that characters can have have compassion for sentient beings or morals that conflict with others. It makes alignment so messy and complicated that I usually just take an alignment test for my characters and mark them down as that.

And tests aren't always accurate either. I know one of the questions on the official Wizards one asked if the character would slip a poison into the ruler's drink if offered enough pay. It also gives the option of warning them of the plot. What if that ruler is a dreadful tyrant?

[neno]

Oh gosh, alignment discussions. C:

popcorn.gif

[luminance]

I just FINALLY got a chance to read your post, Steve, and that was really well-written.

I always try to consider a character's motivations when I'm writing for them, whether it's a PC or one of my dungeons or NPCs. One reason I feel that I'm bad at making dungeons, actually, I have trouble making completely unsympathetic monsters whose sole purpose is to be killed and looted.

B&W is easy if you don't want to think, but for an RP-driven story, I have a much easier time with alignment as described on the first post. I could not play Andy in the quoted 4e system... None of those fit her, really, maybe "good" at best, but it doesn't describe her (wildly selfish and fearful) motivations at all!

Anyway, awesome replies but I totally did not mean to start an alignment debate so much as showcase a cool thing I found that might help out people having some trouble understanding how to place their own character, or otherwise OOCly understanding the motivations of other people's characters. Isn't that thing neat? I love it!

[SteveMaurer]

I think Calvin and Hobbes should have the last word on this subject...