All About Alignment, Part II

Finale installment, I discussed the problems of alignment, and why disdain those problems, throwing out coalition is the condemnable motivate if your effort is based on the themes of myth, legend, and fabrication that most are. I argued that because ethics is "hardcoded" into the most popular RPG genres, such as top fantasy and space opera, RPGs indigence an alinement scheme to maintain their verisimilitude to their genres. I then explored whether we could make signified of the inscrutable yet devilishly popular Dungeons & Dragons alignment arrangement aside applying theory from echt-world ethics.

Successfully explaining the differing D&D alignments as different moral frameworks took us from Lawful Good's deontological altruism to Chaotic Evil's consequentialist nihilism. But this resolution, which might be known as "alignment equally philosophy," is highly abstract. In our follow-up give-and-take on the forums, many of you said you needed a simpler, Thomas More concrete system for your games. So this tower, we'll carry a look at some simpler approaches, including the master copy Chainmail/D&D system and the popular Palladium Megaverse system.

Alignment as Allegiance

The system I described in my last installment could be called "coalition as school of thought," explaining the differing D&D alignments as different moral frameworks. A immensely simpler alternative is what I call "alinement Eastern Samoa allegiance," meaning that a character's alignment is simply a affirmation of which side he is happening in few skin existential to the campaign worldly concern. In a World War II RPG, the alignments could beryllium Allied, Axis, and Neutral. In a Star Wars RPG, the alignments could be Bond, Imperial, and Mercenary. In a Huffy Max/post-apocalyptic RPG, the alignments could be Settler, Looter, and Drifter.

Under this alliance scheme, a character's attribute virtues and vices substance Don't matter, simply his allegiance to the cause. In a World War Deuce linguistic context, if your fiber is a grotty tack together of work that gets off on fear and likes to carve up the flesh of his defeated foes, it doesn't matter, thus long as he fights bravely for the Allies, he's a good guy. (Inglourious Basterds , I'm looking at at you!) Likewise, if your character is an upstanding, artless, disciplined soldier who writes books, loves his married woman, and gives to charity, information technology doesn't matter. If he fights for the Axis of rotation, like Erwin Rommel, he's a pitiful poke fu. If that's too existent, past consider that you needn't mourn the demise of the contractors on the Death Star because they were aligned Imperial beard.

While this might look like a stem revision of what alinement is supposed to do, it actually harkens back to the really first alinement organization in the very first RPG. Look at that the word "alignment" is non a terminus that has anything to do with ethics or morals when used in contexts outside of purpose-acting games. Rather, alignment is mostly used in two ways, neither tied to morality: 1) to refer to something that we need for our car ("I need to fetch my car's alinement adjusted"); 2) to look up to which root in a conflict a nation chooses ("The alignment of Italy with Germany created the Bloc of Steel that was to terrorize Europe").

In the latter reference we find the origin of the term: Alignment in D&D originally referred to which side in a conflict a character chose! Chainmail, the miniature wargame from which D&adenosine monophosphate;D descended, provided an order of battle dividing all creatures into "Natural law," "Neutral," and "Chaos." These were factions within the wargame, just as in a wargame about World War Deuce there would be "Allied," "Neutral," and "Axis" factions. When Chainmail individualized to D&D, the case-by-case character's quality of a faction became known as his "Alignment," American Samoa in indicating which of the warring factions the character had "straight" himself with. The only suggestion of a clean context of use is seen in the fact that presumably pleasant creatures like treants and unicorns were said to be aligned with Law while the likes of evil high priests, vampires, and orcs were same to Be aligned with Bedlam.

Why did Chainmail and D&D use Law and Chaos to account the warring factions? Many people mistakenly credit this to Michael Moorcock and the Elric series, but the origin actually comes from Poul Anderson's classic Three Black Maria and Three Lions:

[He] got the idea that a perpetual struggle went happening between primal forces of Law and Topsy-turvyness… Humans were the chief agents on earth of Jurisprudence, though some of them were so single unconsciously, and some, witches and warlocks, and evildoers, had sold out to Chaos. A few dehumanised beings also stood for Law. Ranged against them were almost the whole Intermediate Global, which seemed to admit realms like Faerie, Trollheim, and the Giants – an actual creation of Chaos. Wars among men, so much as the lengthened-drawn conflict betwixt the Saracens and the Consecrated Empire, aided Chaos; nether Law, all men would living in peacefulness and order and that shore leave which only Law could give meaning. Just this was so alien to Middle Worlders that they were forever working to preclude it and extend their own shadowy dominion."

A similar aboriginal struggle seems to show up in just about every game or genre, representing the war between civilization and barbarity, Western "white hats" v. "black hats," etc.. It is the implicit alinement system of some Villains & Vigilantes and Wonder Superheroes and pretty much all other superhero game. As a scheme, it's exceptionally simple to define, Eastern Samoa all information technology really requires is being able to discover 2 competing sides that a character is fighting for (if not willing to die for any side, the type is neutral). Information technology maintains the sentience of grand struggle that is provided by an over-bowed coalition system, a sense that the character's decisions are part of something larger than himself. And it achieves all these goals while maintaining maximum flexibility for the histrion characters to develop their personalities without concern that they'll violate their alignment.

There are two downsides to "alignment as loyalty" system. The first is that there has to follow some class of existential contravene within the campaign, within which characters hand steady allegiance to one side or another. It would represent hard to consumption alinement as allegiance in Cyberpunk 2020, for instance (everyone's alignment would just be "Someone!"). The second is that the system does not put up any role-playing guidance for how the character mightiness deport. For instance, despite their vast differences in behavior and code, "alliance Eastern Samoa allegiance" puts Loony toons, Batman, and the Punisher all on the indistinguishable side (Sub).

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Alignment as Attitude

Fortunately, in that location's another arrangement you can turn to if what you want is a simple arrangement that rear end differentiate between, e.g., Superman and the Punisher without requiring an understanding of Kant. If parting installment's system was "alignment Eastern Samoa philosophical system," explaining the differing D&D alignments atomic number 3 different moral frameworks, this organisation could be called "alliance as posture" and it appears in all the Atomic number 46 Books Megaverse RPGs. By virtue of the great popularity of Palladium's Rifts and its ilk (Robotech, Heroes Unlimited, etc.) these rules are credibly the second-just about favourite alliance system in tabletop gaming, and even more probably the closest in pattern to how players actually think almost and utilize alignment in play.

Rifts and its relatives describe alignment American Samoa the characters' "attitudes and righteous principles." These alignments are organized on a single axis, good/selfish/evil, with 2-3 alignments of each type. Each alignment is allotted a highly descriptive names: The favourable alignments are "principled" and "scrupulous," the selfish alignments are "unprincipled" and "political theory," and the evil alignments are "aberrant," "reprobate," and "diabolic." Each of these alignments is far defined by a short set of guidelines that describe the habitual behavior of its adherents. E.g., some principled and aberrant characters "e'er dungeon their word" while nihilist characters "Crataegus laevigata observe their watchword" and diabolic characters "rarely keep their word and have none honor." Miscreant characters "will lead astray a friend if it serves their needs" patc diabolical characters "will betray a friend because you can always find another friend." Anarchistic characters "coif not work within groups and tend to do as they delight despite orders on the contrary," while unscrupulous characters "work with groups, specially if its serves his needs, is profitable, and/surgery He's in the glare."

Because the names are descriptive and concrete, and the guidelines are so clear, players pot straight off apprehend what it way to be "principled" or "anarchistic." It's much easier to grasp a concrete set of guidelines than to try to grapple with what it means to be "lawful good" or, god forbid, "chaotic nonsubjective." IT's also practically easier to set apart famous characters into this alignment system (i.e. without much debate one can see that Dot is "principled," Batman is "scrupulous," and The Punisher is "deviate"), which is helpful both in gambling in touristy settings and too in broadly speaking setting expectations. So if the approach to alignment from my prior column strikes you as too abstract and philosophical, the Palladium Games' system is a fast, simple, and effective alternative.

The downside to the Palladium approach is inherent in its strength; the alignments really are just inveterate behaviors. It removes the metaphysical meaning of the alignments entirely. It is hard to envision heroes rallying to the cause of Principledness in the means that we imagine the heroes of Law doing. Nor is thither a sense of metaphysical karma: Nonentity in the Palladium system marks out a Principled character as anything differently a schmuck who lets the bad guys take advantage of his honour and gentleness.

In apply, you can overtake this if you're willing to "drudge the organisation" and correlate the Palladium alignments with the D&D alignments:

• Principled – Lawful Good
• Conscientious – Chaotic Good
• Unprincipled – Neutral (with hot tendencies)
• Anarchistic – Disorganised Neutral
• Aberrant – Lawful Evil
• Reprobate – Neutral Evil
• Diabolic – Chaotic Evil

You can monkey around with the specific behaviors for all, and add new ones to fill in the gaps ("Officialdom" for TRUE nonaligned, for instance), and otherwise flesh out the scheme to your taste.

What Would You Use?

Given that I've presented three different coalition systems for your campaigns, I'd love to hear which system of rules is closest to what you currently use, and what you might use for your next campaign.

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