Weird alignment systems

[wumpus]

We've had recent threads about good/bad alignment systems. How about some oddballs.
[literary fiction, I don't think it's been turned into a game]
What got me started was L.E. Modesitt, Jr. and the Recluse world. Recluse is a world with a strict law/chaos balance. Most mages seem to be chaos (white) mages, and are the blasty type. Less common are the order (black) mages, who are more likely to use buffing, but a few have been known to command weather.

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Truly rare are the gray mages, who are balanced oriented. They are most likely to be the most powerful of the lot

The series starts making it clear that chaos mages == bad, although order is also shown as insufferable. This changes over later books, but the laws of order/chaos have little interest in the cares of men and simply just are.
[/literary fiction]
I'd assume the law/chaos bent of early D&D (0e didn't have good/evil alignments) came from Micheal Moorcock. In one of the early Elric books we see the titular "hero" summon a demon and swear loyalty to chaos. Presumably at that point he gained and alignment, and I've often felt that having an alignment should have a similar action and consequence. Not sure if any games use such (variant D&D include exalted and vile. I'd add them and remove lesser alignments where possible).

One old [and mostly forgotten] game was Bushido. I don't think it had any alignments, but it did have points for honor and face (you got plenty of face points. Honor was harder to come by). I was told to expect to lose/spend face points in town.

Any other ideas about playing in a land of absolute law and chaos? Absolute good and evil is hard enough, and the wisest of men have been pondering and writing down their conclusions for thousands of years. Law and chaos (at least for cultures not steeped in Confucianism) must be a harder nut.

[nedz]

Roger Zelazny's Amber sequence is all about Law and Chaos.

Shea / Wilson: The Illuminatus Trilogy.

Frank Herbert: Dune God Emperor - though this is a little deeper.

Azimov: Foundation Sequence.

[obryn]

Gygax's original Greyhawk setting (and D&D alignments in general) were born largely out of Moorcock's books, particularly the Elric saga.

If you're looking for other games with weird alignment systems, look no further than Avalon Hill's early 80's venture into the RPG market, Powers and Perils. Alignments include Law, Chaos, Balance, Elder, and Kotothi.

[Fri]

Not exactly a game, but I'm reminded of the Repairman Jack novel series.

It's about a bunch of people trying to defeat an ancient evil, and they got another ancient god-like being ally, but their ally is not exactly good. It's just both being had been locked in battle for the universe forever or something in that line, and it's in the ancient evil thing's interest to have earth destroyed, and it's in their ally's interest to have earth preserved.

[dps]

If you're looking for other games with weird alignment systems, look no further than Avalon Hill's early 80's venture into the RPG market, Powers and Perils. Alignments include Law, Chaos, Balance, Elder, and Kotothi.

That was the first thing I thought of when I saw the thread title, but I couldn't remember the name of that 5th alignment.

That system had a lot of really interesting ideas, but IIRC character creation was very involved for the time. Probably not a whole lot more involved than later-day DnD, though.

[obryn]

That was the first thing I thought of when I saw the thread title, but I couldn't remember the name of that 5th alignment.

That system had a lot of really interesting ideas, but IIRC character creation was very involved for the time. Probably not a whole lot more involved than later-day DnD, though.

Yeah, it was really interesting - I've never seen another game quite like it. I've even accomplished the herculean task of creating several characters (who actually end up kind of awesome?)

There's still fans of the game who've made Heroforge-like Excel sheets for character generation. You can find them in that link.

[Telok]

I'v always thought that an interesting 'alignment' system would be a space on the character sheet that said "This character is like the movie ____________"

[goto124]

I've never understood what 'alignment' was even supposed to be.

[obryn]

I've never understood what 'alignment' was even supposed to be.

If you go to the source material - especially the Elric series - it's pretty clear.

The modern versions are really muddy and mostly serve as fodder for dumb forum debates.

[goto124]

The source material of what game system?

[obryn]

The source material of what game system?

The fictional inspirations of D&D, and therefore the fictional inspirations of RPGs in general. That's what I meant; sorry.

[OldTrees1]

I've never understood what 'alignment' was even supposed to be.

Alignment is an abstracted and thus simplified version of the much more complex examination of the specific relationships between example agents and concepts, behaviors, beliefs, and ideals.

I realize that was quite vague but the general case is quite vague. Once you start narrowing down and setting some of the details, then it becomes less vague. Commonly the concepts/ideals being examined are morality. This then contextualizes it as "alignment is the abstracted version of the examination of the specific relationships between example moral agents and morality & the beliefs and behaviors pertaining to morality".

I realize that was still vague. Again you can narrow it further by being less vague about "morality". Provided you have a consistent author you will get a consistent alignment system. Provided you have a relevant author you will get a relevant alignment system. These last 2 qualifiers are why example alignment systems like what WotC wrote tend to be much worse than the alignment system your group/DM would naturally create as a side product of how the NPCs, truth, and the PCs interact in the world.


To describe a similar but overly simplified answer in another manner: "Alignment systems are the testing and examination of potential moral truths through and by their relationships with the simulated characters during the simulation."

[dps]

Yeah, it was really interesting - I've never seen another game quite like it. I've even accomplished the herculean task of creating several characters (who actually end up kind of awesome?)

It's been a long time, but I also remember that I liked the magic system (at least conceptually) better than that of DnD. IIRC, it wasn't so much "This is an X level spell; a caster has to be at least Y level to learn and cast it" as each spell took a certain amount of mana (or some similar term) to learn and cast. How much mana a character had was determined by their level and other attributes, and the more powerful spells took more mana to learn and cast, so while a, say, 2nd level character wasn't forbidden to learn a 5th level spell, it was so costly that it usually wasn't practical.

[Frozen_Feet]

@Goto124: From a dictionary, the relevant definitions:

3. alliance or union with a party, cause, etc
7. (Psychology) integration or harmonization of aims, practices, etc within a group
8. (Psychology) identification with or matching of the behaviour, thoughts, etc of another person

AD&D's two axis alignment system may be the most famous, but in actuality alignment systems are fairly ubiquitous.

Cyberpunk's Humanity score is an alignment system; high score means alignment towards humanity, meaning the ability to think like and empathize with humans, while a low score means becoming machine-like and becoming unable of empathy.

World of Darkness, likewise, contrasts various virtues and vices of supernatural beings to those of humans. Like Cyberpunk, they basically track how far gone a character is.

Same goes for various Corruption systems in, for example, LotR and Conan. In the former, Corruption means falling under the Shadow and failing to uphold heroic virtues; in the latter, Corruption means losing your soul to sorcerous, inhuman powers.

So on and so forth.

If D&D's Good vs. Evil or Moorcock's Law vs. Chaos doesn't open up to you, think of Seven Heavenly Virtues versus Seven Deadly Sins.

[Arbane]

I rather like the way one of the Moorcock based BRP games handled it - IIRC, rather than Alignment, they had 'Elan', which was a running total of which gods currently liked you for your actions. You could have Elan scores with more than one god.

Legends of the Wulin tosses out 'alignment' entirely, and instead has characters point-buy virtues - both 'good' ones like Honor, Benevolence, Righteousness, and Loyalty, and 'evil' ones like Selfishness, Individuality, Obsession, and Ruthlessness. When you accomplished Deeds (particularly impressive in-game actions with a strong RP element,) you got rewarded with (to oversimplify) Luck Points and plot-related XP equal to the appropriate virtue's rating - which meant (for example) that a Selfish person is rewarded for acting selfishly, which encourages more selfishness....

[Milo v3]

Chronicles of Darkness has a few weird ones.
Werewolf the Forsaken's alignment system is a sliding scale of Human to Spiritual, since your half-spirit. The more human things you do, the further down the human side you go. The more supernatural things you do, the more you are aligned to the spirit world.

Vampire the Requiem's alignment system measures how close you are to humanity mentally. Where it starts high, but the more you do monstrous things like kill or acknowledge your death, or watch people eating food, or simply not hanging around humans for too long, you start to slip and become more monstrous. This monstrous nature even gives penalties on social actions with humans as you stop understanding them as people and see them more as food, and makes you look more like a corpse. It also has it so if something causes your humanity to slip, you can choose that action to not ever risk making you slip again by becoming slightly more of an eldritch monster and taking a weakness like having to count rice on the floor or staying away from crosses and stuff.

Finally, Beast has an immensely weird alignment system where it is "How hungry is my soul". If it's high, your monstrous soul is sated and relaxed, but if it goes low it becomes ravenous. This makes it so that when it's high, your more human, but when it's low many of your physical powers get supercharged. It's increased by terrifying people, and decreased over time or you can spend it to supercharge a power to a giant extent.

[DrewID]

Chivalry & Sorcery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chivalry_%26_Sorcery had alignment that was rolled up with the rest of your stats. On 3d6 (or maybe it was 1d20; it's been too long), ranging from pretty darn evil to seriously good. Utterly foreign to most modern gamers, but this was the mid 70s, darn it.

Found my copy. 1d20 it is. A set of the original rules was made available by Gamestuff, Inc. at one point. Weirdly enough, low is good, while high is evil.

Lawful Alignment
1 Saintly
2 Devout
3 Good
4 Virtuous
5 Worthy
6 Trustworthy
7 Honourable
Neutral Alignment
8-9 Law Abiding
10-13 Wordly
14-15 Corruptible
Chaotic Alignment
16 Unscrupulous
17 Base
19 Villainous
20 Diabolic

[Arbane]

Oh, TORG had like three different alignment-ish systems for the different encroaching worlds.

The Nile Empire (pulp action world): people are Good or Evil. Nice and simple.
Aysle (medieval-ish fantasy world): people can have Honor and Corruption points. (But not both at once.) Getting a lot of either gives you special abilities. Too much Corruption makes either you, or your entire country, ugly.
Orrosh (Victorian Horror World): Corruption exists. Getting a lot of it gives you benefits, and might turn you into a monster.

[LibraryOgre]

And, of course, there's the Force, with Light Side and Dark side, which generally conform to Good and Evil, but not necessarily to law and chaos.

Palladium, of course, has an alignment system that's a slight reskin of AD&D, but that gets very specific about what different alignments will and will not do.... a Principled person is unlikely to ever tell a lie, even in extreme circumstances, while a scrupulous person is more flexible about that.

[ImNotTrevor]

My favorite alignment is "Alignment? What is that? That's not a thing in this game."

Which is a surprisingly common method of dictating alignment. And I love that. :D

[Siegemonkeys]

Honestly, the best alignment system is no alignment system. It's fine as a general idea of what sort of values your character has, but as a strict definition of what your character would do, it's honestly a burden more than anything.

[FabulousFizban]

Use myers-briggs :D

Smite Introvert!

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Honestly, the best alignment system is no alignment system.

I'm in this camp, mostly. There are two good reasons for using alignment systems, as far as I see it at the moment. One is to help people come up with characters that are more than just a combination of powers, but have some form of motivation. But it's far from necessary for that, and can hinder people as well. Some concepts are simply not likely to come up if you start thinking along the lines of any single alignment system. Myers-Briggs or any other personality classification system could be used for this purpose, and might even work better than most meant-for-games systems.

The other reason is when you want to use it game-mechanically. Smite evil/good is a good example of course. or maybe certain spells are dark/light magic. You cannot learn the soul devouring spell if you don't have the pure blackness in your heart needed to actually use it. Systems that track madness or humanity are tied to mechanics as well. This is all fine. If you want to have mechanical differences between lustful and chaste people (a bonus on resisting seduction rolls? A penalty on making seduction rolls? Lower vulnerability to diseases? Immunity to being gossiped about? Being gossiped about all the time because nobody knows anything for sure?) you will need to known which characters fall in which group.

I generally prefer not bothering with it too much.

[Mastikator]

The good---evil lawful---chaotic alignment system is pretty weird.

[OldTrees1]

The good---evil lawful---chaotic alignment system is pretty weird.

Elaborate?

[goto124]

Look at all the arguments this forum has over the DnD alignment system!

[Mechalich]

D&D's alignment system is 'weird' mostly in that it is highly counter-intuitive with regard to the position of the neutral alignment and the implications thereof.

In most moral systems the boundary between good and evil is considered to be quite stark. Star Wars is a good example. Most such systems are also highly dualistic.

D&D is neither. It's a three-phase system and the space occupied by 'neutral' actions is vast, and that's weird. There are a huge array of actions that you can take in D&D that are neither good nor evil and these can be as massive as genocide - Formians invade your world and kill/thrall everyone: D&D says not evil. Law/Chaos examples are less obvious because it's less clear what those terms mean exactly, but they can be equally stark - the distance between Modrons and Slaadi is immense.

D&D posits an objective moral calculus - meaning that good and evil are defined by beings that, if not supreme, are incalculably more powerful and wiser than mortals - but that calculus bears little resemblance to the ones most players, and especially most Western players raised in Christianity, intuitively recognize.

Various voices in D&D started to come down pretty hard on the 'balance is essential' viewpoint in D&D moral debate, which centered around the claim that the destruction of all evil forever would somehow be a horrible thing (Troy Denning makes this argument very literally in Pages of Pain, which is probably the most meta D&D novel ever written), which is a freakish piece of circular logic that pretty much only makes sense within D&D's own constructions.

So yeah, the D&D alignment wheel is pretty strange.

[Zumbs]

I'm in this camp, mostly. There are two good reasons for using alignment systems, as far as I see it at the moment.

I would add a third one: It makes it easier for the GM to keep track of the reputation of each player. If they actually act within the bounds of their alignment, they build a reputation for acting in a certain way, e.g. lawful characters will have a tendency to keep their word, good characters will be benevolent etc. If the players step outside of the bounds of their alignment, the GM can let them change alignment to something more fitting. Without an alignment system, it can be tricky to keep track of all the small interactions over the course of a long campaign - I have learned that the hard way as I also do not use alignments.

As for more interesting variations, I have taken a liking to the system used in Pillars of Eternity, where your actions give you points in certain traits, e.g. honesty, cruelty, stoicism and many more.

One of my favorite RPG systems while growing up (Swedish RPG Drakar och Demoner) used something that they called "Life goals". This could be things like Seeking fame, Egoism, Honor, Benevolence, Knowledge, Equality, Power hungry, Wanderlust and many more with a make up your own mentality. This allowed the player to set up a fine grained set of drives and ambitions.

[shadow_archmagi]

Use myers-briggs :D

Smite Introvert!

Just layer it onto 3.5's system.

"I'm Chaotic Extrovert!"

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Just layer it onto 3.5's system.

"I'm Chaotic Extrovert!"

Becomes quite a mouthful that way. Yeah, I'm CGESTP. (Also, I propose calling evil villainous , that way only the two neutrals share a letter that also appears in another spot. Maybe leave out the neutrals alltogether because that's the whole point of Myers-Briggs.)