Friday 19 November 2010

Alignment: Blurring the lines

We didn't get to play in last night's gaming session, but I did get to thrash out some ideas for house rules with David - and he made a very valid point about the dullness of "Neutral" characters(1). With that in mind, I've been considering replacing the nine alignments with nine overlapping blocks of four:





...in that this gives a better handle on personality and motivation, while still representing the moral (good/evil) and organisational (law/chaos) axes from TWBSRPG... The central four blocks loosely represent "Neutral" - as in no particular leanings in any direction - while still giving suggestions about personality. Similarly, the top-right four represent "Chaotic Good", the bottom middle represent "Neutral Evil", and so on.

I'm hoping to expand on this, but I'd appreciate any feedback on the idea...

(1) Dave's argument was that Neutral characters have no motivation; no real urge to do good or ill, or choose to follow or disregard the rules. The other classic Neutral archetype is the "True Neutral Druid", a character who consciously strives to maintain the balance of the world, which is often difficult to fit into party motivations.

4 comments:

  1. This idea looks interesting Tom. I'll hope to hear more about this at next week’s games night.

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  2. Thanks - I've updated the table with a brief description of the kind of thing I mean by each of these personality types...

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  3. That's a really well thought out box and it gives players a stricter guide on how to play their characters... I think that part of the problem is player's motivation to play their characters. Most look at alignment as a crutch, rather than an extra factor of roleplaying. This chart might not help players with that problem.

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  4. Thank - I hoped it would make roleplaying easier to try and express alignments as personalities... but it's still WIP.

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