Rift's alignement system: simply WAY better

[SolkaTruesilver]

Here are the alignement usually described in the Rift game system. I found them to be both more interestingly described, and more player-friendly when they are being applied.


Principled (Good)
Principled characters are, generally, the strong, moral character.
(Solka's note: They rarely lie, respect the law, try to be ALWAYS honest, etc.. A true lawful by-the-book good)

Scrupulous (Good)
Scrupulous characters value life and freedom above all else, and
despise those who would deprive others of them. This type of hero is
typically portrayed in many Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson films;
the person who is forced to work beyond the law, yet for the law, and
the greater good of the people. They are not vicious or vindictive men,
but are men driven to right injustice. I must point out that these characters
will always attempt to work with or within the law whenever possible.
Many cyber-knights are scrupulous.


Unprincipled (Selfish)
This, basically, good person tends to be selfish, greedy, and holds
his/her personal freedom and welfare above almost everything else.
He/she dislikes confining laws, self-discipline and distrusts authority.
This is the Han Solo, Star Wars, character. The guy who is always
looking for the best deal, associates with good and evil characters, is
continually tempted to lie and cheat, and hates himself for being loyal
and helping others.

Anarchist (Selfish)
This type of character likes to indulge himself in everything. He is
the insurgent, con-man, gambler and high roller; the uncommitted
freebooter seeking nothing more than self-gratification. This character
will, at least, consider doing anything if the price is right. These people
are intrigued by power, glory and wealth. Life has meaning, but his
has the greatest meaning. Laws and rules infringe on personal freedom
and were meant to be broken. An anarchist aligned person is always
looking for the best deal, and will work with good, selfish or evil to
get it; as long as he comes out of the situation on top. The anarchist
is continually teetering between good and evil, rebelling, and bending
the law to fit his needs. Often mercenaries fall into this category

Miscreant (Evil)
This self-serving, unscrupulous character is out only for himself.
Power, glory, wealth, position, and anything that will make his life
more comfortable is his goal. It matters not who gets caught in the
middle, as long as he comes out smelling like a rose. This person will
lie, cheat and kill anyone to attain his personal goals.

Aberrant (Evil)
The cliche that there is "No honor among thieves." is false when
dealing with the aberrant character. This is a person who is driven to
attain his goals through force, power, and intimidation. Yet the aberrant
person stands apart from the norm, with his own, personal code of
ethics (although twisted ethics by the standards of good). He expects
loyalty from his minions, punishing disloyalty and treachery with a
swift, merciful death. An aberrant person will always keep his word
of honor and uphold any bargains. He will define his terms and live
by them, whether anyone else likes it or not.


Diabolic (Evil)
This is the category where the megalomaniacs, violent, and most
despicable characters fall. This is the cruel, brutal killer who trusts no
one and has no value for anyone or anything that gets in his way.
Aberrant aligned characters find these dishonorable people just as revolting
as a good aligned character.


When you think about it, these alignement allow for much less bi-dimensional characters than in D&D. SImply try to make fit the characters in OOTS.

Roy: Principled
Durkon: Principled
V: Unprincipled
Haley: Unprincipled (or scrupulous)
Elan: Scrupulous
Belkar: Miscreant
Redcloak: Aberrant
Xykon: Diabolic

I think the "Aberrant" alignement is simply much more interesting than anything coming close to "Lawful Evil".

[Dragonmuncher]

Um... they sound pretty similar to me, actually. Only difference is that I doubt that there are "Detect Principled" spells, which is fine by me.

[MrNexx]

What Solka leaves out is the specificity of the alignment system for Palladium. If you look at the description of Principled in any Palladium core book, it lists what such a character will or will not do. For example

Miscreant Characters Will...
1. Not necessarily keep his word to anyone.
2. Lie and cheat anyone; good or evil.
3. Most definitely attack an unarmed foe (those are the best kind).
4. Use or harm an innocent.
5. Use torture for extracting information and pleasure.
6. May kill for pleasure.
7. Feels no compulsion to help without some sort of tangible reward.
8. Work with others if it will help him attain his personal goal.
9. Kill an unarmed foe as readily as he would a potential threat or competitor.
10. Has no deference to laws or authority, but will work within the law if he must.
11. Will betray a friend if it serves his needs.

Obviously, this doesn't cover every possible behavior, but it leaves very few questions about what kind of character a Miscreant individual is, or how they're likely to act in a given situation... they will act in their own best interests, regardless of the actions required. Some have come up with points-based systems to describe characters a bit more dynamically, but there's no question as to what's a "Chaotic" action.

Furthermore, Palladium doesn't tie alignment to supernatural forces... there's no detect alignment spells, and precious few effects that directly rely on it.

[The_Snark]

They look pretty similar, actually. Principled is like Lawful Good, Scrupulous is like Chaotic Good, and Neutral Good is somewhere in between (but not represented here...); Miscreant and Diabolic correspond pretty closely with Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil, although arguments could be made for Diabolic also covering some Neutral Evil/Lawful Evil villains. Abberant is mentioned as a subset of Lawful Evil. The Selfish alignments both sound a lot like Chaotic Neutral.

There would seem to be no alignment whatsoever for ordinary people with no strong moral opinions, as well. A lot of people dislike D&D alignments for being too confining, and these are a lot more limiting, it looks to me.

Of course, some people also dislike the D&D alignments for not really meaning anything, so they might like these more... then again, they might not; a lot of the same arguments could apply. Me, I rather like D&D alignments; you can essentially give your own interpretation to them and decide how confining they are.

[Chronos]

Obviously, this doesn't cover every possible behavior, but it leaves very few questions about what kind of character a Miscreant individual is, or how they're likely to act in a given situation...

That sounds like a significant drawback, to me. The idea isn't to pick an alignment and then roleplay that alignment; the idea is to design a character and play it, and then figure out what alignment that character is. When you can define exactly what a character will or will not do by assigning one of seven categories, that's a serious limit on roleplaying options.

[Icewalker]

Yeah looks to me:

Principled: Lawful Good
Scrupulous: Neutral Good
Unprincipled: Chaotic Neutral, or True Neutral
Anarchist: Chaotic Neutral
Miscreant: Neutral Evil
Aberrant: Lawful Evil
Diabolic: Chaotic Evil


This is with some wiggle room. Looks pretty similar to me, personally I don't see how it can be WAY anything in comparison. Too similar.

[jamroar]

That sounds like a significant drawback, to me. The idea isn't to pick an alignment and then roleplay that alignment; the idea is to design a character and play it, and then figure out what alignment that character is. When you can define exactly what a character will or will not do by assigning one of seven categories, that's a serious limit on roleplaying options.

I agree. The codified Palladium alignment system tends to pigeonhole characters even more into their seven profile stereotypes than the looser D&D alignment system, and for no particular mechanical reason.

[Erk]

Having played a lot of palladium games in my younger days, I would have to say it is not "way" better. It was presented more effectively, though: rather than trying to codify into too many debatable concepts like "chaotic" and "lawful", it uses semi-abstract terms that allowed less debate simply because there were fewer preconceptions of what they meant. Having guidelines for how a person of an alignment behaved was also nice: nobody in my groups at the time (and most of them were not very good groups) used alignment to dictate their character's behaviour any more than in d&d... generally less.

On the downside, there were not enough alignments available for every style of play, and I generally found myself designing new alignments for every second character I made. Again on the upside, that was pretty easy; it would have been great if an "alignment template" was included in the main books to encourage custom alignments.

[Mr. Friendly]

I like the Palladium system but honestly find it not all that different from D&D.

/Aberrant
/Lawful Neutral (Evil)

[Tengu]

Indeed, the alignment system of Rifts looks like DND, only without Neutral Good and Lawful Neutral. Is it not just better to revolutionize the alignment system by ditching it completely, making the players describe the personality of their characters instead?

[Riffington]

There's a lot that's lame about it, but there are three main advantages over D&D's system.

1. the existence of Unprincipled as a basically neutral who is good when you push her. There are just a huge number of players who want to play something in between N and CG, and this lets you.
(I'd personally just let a player be in between two alignments, without calling them a "fence sitter")

2. The difference between everyday-bad and vile is more clear. Miscreant is the everyday CE. Someone who fits into society or not, but does enjoy causing pain/harm to others.
Diabolic is the superevil, and is more NE (though it could be LE or CE as well, depending).

3. The description of Aberrant seems less likely than the description of LE to make players think "this alignment is all about finding loopholes".

The disadvantages, however, are well described.

[Kurald Galain]

How about trying the Nature/Demeanor system from White Wolf?

[technophile]

Indeed, the alignment system of Rifts looks like DND, only without Neutral Good and Lawful Neutral. Is it not just better to revolutionize the alignment system by ditching it completely, making the players describe the personality of their characters instead?

The unfortunate drawback to that is that D&D has a number of mechanics based on alignment (and they've added more in 3.x, not removed them). You have your paladin's detect/smite evil, your protection from evil spells, your aligned weapons, DR x/alignment, etc etc. Taking a defined alignment out of the game eliminates these (or at least limits them in use rather severely).

Now, I don't particularly think that's a problem (IMO, things like detect/protection from alignment should work only on outsiders or other extremely powerful representatives of that force, not on an average very-slightly-evil Commoner 1), but it is something you have to recognize and figure out how to deal with.

The alignment system is one of my major problems with D&D, just because it is so confining; it's too bad they've hung so many mechanics off of it.

[TheSteelRat]

I've generally found character alignments as a general system to be annoying, and instead do it on a more situational approach. For example, I had one character who was Lawful Good to those within his community (a small, tight-knit bunch), but Lawful Neutral to those outside it, and Lawful Evil against an evil empire that threatened it among others. How could one play that given the hard & fast rules of D&D Alignment? Since there aren't any mechanics in Rifts, I suppose he'd just have a similar varying alignment. (Principled > Unprincipled > Miscreant)

[hewhosaysfish]

The first problem with alignment is that is too vague: We have all seen endless (in both quantity and duration) debates about whether action X is Neutral or Evil, with someone inevitably wading in too call it Good, then someone else getting it confused with the real world and claiming morality is subjective... *cough*Miko!*cough*
Law vs Chaos is even worse, because it doesn't map inuitively to the judgements we make irl.
So we attempt to refine the definitions, to come up with descriptions of alignments which allow us to make definite decisions: This is definitely Good, that definitely isn't. Since we don't have much (consistent) input from the rulebooks, we supplement it with out own values and perceptions. If we are lucky, we may find one person on the whole of the internet who agrees entirely with our "improved" definitions.

The second problem with aligment is that, having decided in our own minds how we categorise behaviour into these 9 groups, we find that it is now too restrictive. They 9 alignments are so narrow that there is only one way to roleplay each one. This cannot, of course, be the result of our redefinition; we merely clarified the existing system, bringing nothing of ourselves into it. Clearly the whole alignment system is imposing this intolerable straight-jacket upon us .

Thus we see that the solution to the problem of alignment must necessarily be a (exhaustive and mutually exclusive) set of behaviours each one of which clearly and accurately describes how a character will behave in any given situation without placing limits on how the character acts in that situation.

[Yogi]

In what way does "less flexibility and less options" translate into "WAY better"?

[spotmarkedx]

"Hi. I'm the tyrannical ruler of a kingdom because the world around is unstable. If I don't rule my land with a iron fist, it will fall prey to the strong countries around me. My dream is to unite all the countries in the continent under my rule by ruthlessly conquering their people and stamping out any that might oppose my rule, which will as a result eventually bring stability and happiness to my people." (see the movie "Hero" for this character)

"Let me see here, I don't seem to find my value system in your set of very tight codes. Perhaps it is not necessarily 'simply WAY better'."

Acknowledging that there are faults with the two axis alignment system is not a problem for me. However, I have never found Palladiums structured alignments any better, especially when you consider that they are even more confining than D&D added to the fact that you have less options.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Which is the reason of traits of personality. I'm pretty sure Palladium introduced such a variant in one splatbook.

[Dausuul]

The second problem with aligment is that, having decided in our own minds how we categorise behaviour into these 9 groups, we find that it is now too restrictive. They 9 alignments are so narrow that there is only one way to roleplay each one. This cannot, of course, be the result of our redefinition; we merely clarified the existing system, bringing nothing of ourselves into it. Clearly the whole alignment system is imposing this intolerable straight-jacket upon us .

Thus we see that the solution to the problem of alignment must necessarily be a (exhaustive and mutually exclusive) set of behaviours each one of which clearly and accurately describes how a character will behave in any given situation without placing limits on how the character acts in that situation.

Okay, I'm assuming this was sarcasm. It's hard to tell for sure.

If it isn't sarcasm, I would then point out that there is another perfectly adequate solution to the problem of alignment, which is to ditch the whole thing and scrap mechanics that require it.

Alternatively, if you don't want to get rid of alignment entirely, remove the "personality" aspect from alignment and define it purely in terms of moral codes, with options for "consistently adheres to this code," "does not consistently adhere to or violate this code," and "consistently violates this code." Then lay out precisely what each moral code entails.

[Saph]

I think it's sarcasm, and I kind of agree with it.

The reason so many people make such a mess of alignment is because they think alignments will tell them how to play their characters. You're Lawful Good, so you must behave in exactly this way. Then they find it restrictive and complain. Of course it's restrictive, because they're making it that way!

The way to use alignment well is to make the character's personality FIRST. First you create a character, along with their quirks and background and nature. Then you decide which of the nine alignments describes them best. Describing someone as LG or CE is like describing a person as 'generous' or 'self-centred'. Two people can both be generous yet still be completely different personalities.

- Saph

[Dausuul]

I think it's sarcasm, and I kind of agree with it.

The reason so many people make such a mess of alignment is because they think alignments will tell them how to play their characters. You're Lawful Good, so you must behave in exactly this way. Then they find it restrictive and complain. Of course it's restrictive, because they're making it that way!

The way to use alignment well is to make the character's personality FIRST. First you create a character, along with their quirks and background and nature. Then you decide which of the nine alignments describes them best. Describing someone as LG or CE is like describing a person as 'generous' or 'self-centred'. Two people can both be generous yet still be completely different personalities.

- Saph

This would be a lot more feasible if there weren't so many alignment-restricted classes and options. If I want to play a paladin, I can't start with a personality and then pick the appropriate alignment. I've got to start with Lawful Good and then figure out how my personality conforms to it.

Paladins are an extreme example, of course; but any class with alignment restrictions suffers from this problem to a degree. Let's say I'm making a barbarian. My barbarian is a proud warrior to whom honor is very important. He considers it beneath a warrior's dignity to lie or steal, and takes great pride in keeping his word to others. While he doesn't have much truck with "civilized" society, he does uphold the traditions of his tribe...

...oops! I just made a Lawful barbarian. Now I have to either re-think my character's personality, or pick a different class. I could probably cobble together a fighter or ranger that would almost be what I had in mind, but why should I have to give up rage, the Survival skill, or medium armor proficiency because my personality didn't fit the barbarian archetype?

Furthermore, if the system doesn't work for a large number of players, then it's a bad system. Saying that "those people are using the system wrong" misses the point. The system should not be built in such a way that it encourages people to use it wrong.

[Saph]

...oops! I just made a Lawful barbarian. Now I have to either re-think my character's personality, or pick a different class. I could probably cobble together a fighter or ranger that would almost be what I had in mind, but why should I have to give up rage, the Survival skill, or medium armor proficiency because my personality didn't fit the barbarian archetype?

Furthermore, if the system doesn't work for a large number of players, then it's a bad system. Saying that "those people are using the system wrong" misses the point. The system should not be built in such a way that it encourages people to use it wrong.

*shrug* Any system of rules is going to restrict you to some degree. You might as well complain that you can't get trapfinding, a high HD, and full spellcasting progression at the same time.

As for 'the system should not be built in such a way that it encourages people to use it wrong' . . . Dausuul, if you can design even the simplest of systems that DOESN'T get complaints like that, you're either a god or a multimillionaire.

- Saph

[Tengu]

The unfortunate drawback to that is that D&D has a number of mechanics based on alignment (and they've added more in 3.x, not removed them). You have your paladin's detect/smite evil, your protection from evil spells, your aligned weapons, DR x/alignment, etc etc. Taking a defined alignment out of the game eliminates these (or at least limits them in use rather severely).

That is true, however, using the system from Rifts would also require modifying those mechanics. Which makes it an inferior system to both lack of alignments and DND's alignments, with a single slight advantage in one aspect over the latter - the alignments are better named.

[SolkaTruesilver]

I have a confession to make: I wrote my original title & post in the intend to attract people to this thread, in order to make a legitimate comparison between D&D's alignement system and others.

The thing is, I find Rift's description of alignement to be better described than D&D's in the textbook. Making it easier for players to understand the different behavior choices laying in front of him.

[hewhosaysfish]

Okay, I'm assuming this was sarcasm. It's hard to tell for sure.

You assume correctly. The bolded section was intended to appear obviously and inherently self-contradictory. The only possible solution (that I can see) is to have a unique alignment for every character. This would be an impossibility to create rules for and would inevitably end up being indistinguishable from a no-alignments system.

If it isn't sarcasm, I would then point out that there is another perfectly adequate solution to the problem of alignment, which is to ditch the whole thing and scrap mechanics that require it.

Two more solutions:
1) Don't demand perfect black-and-white boundaries. Don't stress over whether your Robin Hood-esque character is technically CG for robbing tax collectors or if he is technically LG for defying a usurper. Just pick one that looks OK and run with it. Who's going to prove you wrong? [My preferred option]
2) Stick to the black-and-white boundaries. Don't stress that your LG fighter thinks and talks and acts like every other LG fighter.Just focus on killing those goblins and saving the princess, in the name of honour, justice and virtue! [Unlikely to be popular, except in very roleplay-light games]

Alternatively, if you don't want to get rid of alignment entirely, remove the "personality" aspect from alignment and define it purely in terms of moral codes, with options for "consistently adheres to this code," "does not consistently adhere to or violate this code," and "consistently violates this code." Then lay out precisely what each moral code entails.

Hmm... interesting... Would these codes be a fixed part of the system/campaign?
Is so then we just end up with a variation of the existing alignment system. Make one code which says "Make sacrifices to help others and don't harm the innocent" and another which says "Be orderly, methodical and organised"and we're back where we started. Even if we don't uses these codes, the same sorts of problems will arise, we've simply switched terminology.

If not then presumably each player is allowed to select/create one or more codes and defines how they relate to them. But if these code-based alignments are to have any purpose then we must be able to reliably define how any given character (including NPCs) relates to any given code. Essentially this is the same problem as before only with the players creating their own alignment axises (axes?) to muddy the waters.

[Quietus]

Indeed, the alignment system of Rifts looks like DND, only without Neutral Good and Lawful Neutral. Is it not just better to revolutionize the alignment system by ditching it completely, making the players describe the personality of their characters instead?

This is one of the things I liked most about World of Darkness - at least, the old one, I don't know about the new one. Rather than having hard-and-fast alignments, they had several pages worth of personality archetypes, of which you generally picked two : One that is what you show to the world, and one that's actually the way you are inside. Both could be the same, but they didn't have to be. They had a few mechanical things based off of this - I believe recovering Willpower was one of them, any time you did something significant that fell in line with one of them - but nothing that would let an opposing player scan you and immediately know who you are morally.

[hewhosaysfish]

Let's say I'm making a barbariancharacter. My barbariancharacter is a proud warrior to whom honor is very important. He considers it beneath a warrior's dignity to lie or steal, and takes great pride in keeping his word to others. While he doesn't have much truck with "civilized" society, he does uphold the traditions of his tribe...
... and because every single member of an "uncivilised" tribe absolutely has to have rage, fast movement and trapsense, so the concept absolutely requires that he have levels in the barbarian class...

...oops! I just made a Lawful barbarian. Now I have to either re-think my character's personality, or pick a different class. I could probably cobble together a fighter or ranger that would almost be what I had in mind, but why should I have to give up rage, the Survival skill, or medium armor proficiency because my personality didn't fit the barbarian archetype?

I am a samurai but I am not a samurai

[Ralfarius]

I believe hewhosaysfish has made a remark classified as an 'oh, snap!'

[Tequila Sunrise]

Here are the alignement usually described in the Rift game system. I found them to be both more interestingly described, and more player-friendly when they are being applied.

Whatever floats your boat. I myself prefer the symmetry and elasticity of the D&D alignment system.

[Dausuul]

*shrug* Any system of rules is going to restrict you to some degree. You might as well complain that you can't get trapfinding, a high HD, and full spellcasting progression at the same time.

As for 'the system should not be built in such a way that it encourages people to use it wrong' . . . Dausuul, if you can design even the simplest of systems that DOESN'T get complaints like that, you're either a god or a multimillionaire.

- Saph

It's called interface design, and there are a lot of people who do it for a living, most of whom are not gods or multimillionaires (although the best often end up working for billion-dollar companies). See modern computers versus computers fifteen years ago.

It's not always easy, to be sure, but it's not impossible either. The basic rule is to look at how people are using your system. If everyone is using it wrong, then figure out what element or aspect of the system is leading them to use it wrong, and modify that element.

To go back to my earlier example, say I've come up with a character concept: "Big muscular warrior who goes into a rage in battle, is good in the wilderness, and believes in honor and tradition." Okay, pretty straightforward concept, right? I'm not asking to be a god on earth, just a brawny warrior with wilderness skills, personal honor, and battle-rage. I ought to be able to play this guy.

Now I go to translate it into mechanics. I look over the class list. Big muscular warrior, rages in combat, good in the wilderness--sounds like a barbarian. Then I look over the alignment list. Believes in honor and tradition, keeps his word, doesn't lie or steal--sounds like lawful. So far, so good.

Then the system trips me up. I discover that I can't be a lawful barbarian, and I have to go back and hunt around for ways to make a character who fits my concept. If I'm a master of the system, I can probably figure out a way to do that. But if I'm new to the game, I'm simply not going to be able to make this character. Some part of my concept is going to have to go.

The inevitable result of this is that most players learn to build their characters mechanics-first, because it's much easier to do it that way. Everything about D&D pushes you in that direction. But the alignment system depends on concept-first character design. The result is that the alignment system appears broken.

There are a few ways to approach this issue. One would be to revamp all of D&D to push concept-first design. Frankly, I don't see this happening; it might be possible to make a class-based RPG that encourages concept-first, but I have no idea how to go about it and I've never seen it done.

Another approach would be to remove the incentives to do alignment mechanics-first. If any alignment could be used with any class, then alignment could be done concept-first while the rest of the system stayed mechanics-first. I don't know if that would work in practice--I suspect that once people get into the mechanics-first mindset, they'll go mechanics-first all the way--but it would be worth considering.

Or, modify alignment so that it works when you do it mechanics-first.

Or scrap it altogether.