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Here's a variant alignment system I've been thinking about.
These are the components:
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Liberty- "People should be free" (friendly with Order, doesn't like Tyranny or Chaos)
Order- "People should be protected" (friendly with Liberty, doesn't like Tyranny or Chaos)
Chaos- "No right, no responsibilities, no rules" (friendly with Liberty, doesn't like Order or Tyranny)
Tyranny- "People should do as they're told" (friendly with Order, doesn't like Liberty or Chaos)
(Note that being aligned with tyranny is not the same as being a tyrant! Believing in and supporting tyranny counts too.)
Liberty and Order are moderate alignments, so they define good as "harmony" and don't play well with extremes.
Tyranny and Chaos are extreme alignments, defining good as "law" or "lawlessness" respectively, so they don't play well with alignments which oppose their beliefs.
A person's alignment is written in the format "XvsY", like LvsC or TvsL, telling us first what a character stands for, then what they stand against.
It also tells us how they might compromise: an OvsC knight would sooner sacrifice people's liberty or even support a tyrant than see his kingdom collapse into chaos, though he wouldn't be happy about it. More on that below.
Each character defines morality in terms of their own beliefs: Treat characters as a step closer to good for the purposes of your abilities for each alignment component they share with you. Treat them as a step closer to evil if they oppose what you stand for or stand for what you oppose.
Items use the beliefs of their creator.
Law and Chaos stay absolute.
Everyone counts as a step closer to lawful if they stand for Order/Tyranny or oppose Liberty/Chaos, and a step closer to chaotic if they stand for Liberty/Chaos or oppose Order/Tyranny.
There's one last component to this alignment system: Characters are Grim, Noble or Balanced.
This is a measure of how much they're willing to compromise to get things done, like the knight in the example above. It's often the difference between a shining champion and a feared anti-hero.
In terms of mechanics, this dictates which moral alignment characters are for the purposes of their own abilities: A Grim cleric channels negative energy, while a paladin must always be Noble. Balanced characters count as neutral.
Using spells with the Evil descriptor is now a Grim act, while using spells with the Good descriptor is not an aligned act at all.
Grim characters focus on supporting the alignment they stand for. They're willing to ignore its' friendly alignment if that helps them achieve their goals.
They also focus on fighting the alignment they oppose, accepting or even supporting acts they believe to be wrong if that helps. It may not be pretty, but it gets the job done.
Noble characters will not sacrifice their friendly alignment nor use the methods of alignments they dislike in any but the most extreme situations. To the Noble, the ends cannot justify the means.
Obviously Balanced characters seek a balance between these two extremes.
Your position on the Grim/Noble axis is denoted as a letter after the rest of your alignment, ie. OvsT -N
Feels like there are missing alignment conflicts in place-- for instance, the closest I can come to my alignment under that system is TvsO Grim. I'm not even sure that should be a legal alignment.
Hmm sounds pretty evil, from my perspective.
It's not a legal alignment, no. How would you describe your alignment? I wouldn't be surprised if it can be represented.
One other thing I forgot to mention is that instead of standing for and against anything, you can just be unaligned. Unaligned characters treat everybody as neutral and are still grim, noble or balanced.
Imagine someone raised by Neutral Evil Druids. Everything they believe about the world-- survival of the fittest, dog eat dog, red in tooth and claw-- is true. It's the world he lives in, it's the world he understands, and he's comfortable in it.
But he's not Evil himself, or at least he's not selfish. He's ruthless because Nature is ruthless, but he's not cruel. Imagine that he wants to help people. He wants to help people become fit enough to survive. He wants to make little dogs into big dogs and make them tough enough to survive going tooth and claw with the other predators. He approaches this with the same selfless devotion to duty as any Paladin; his Law is the law of the jungle and his Good is the pure meritocracy of natural selection.
He absolutely stands for something.
Why isn't order friendly with tyranny?
The system proposed is asymmetrical, which isn't a bad thing in itself, but it annoys my Cartesian mind. Liberty and order are "liked" twice, while nobody like tyranny and chaos. Also, "friendliness" seems unidirectional. For example, Order is friendly with liberty but liberty doesn't like order...
It's an very interesting substitution for Alignment, but I feel I need more explanation.
Viktyr, I would call that alignment CvsO. It might be anywhere on the N/B/G scale, but I'm inclined to say Noble, since the guy is trying his best to be good and do the right thing for others, as he understands it.
Chaos here is not the traditional chaos of D&D, I just couldn't find a better word for it. "The law of the jungle" is just another way of saying no law at all, and that's what my Chaos alignment is all about.
Chaos believes that might makes right, or that there is no right. It believes standing in the way of might is wrong; that it's just making up arbitrary rules and claiming to be more enlightened than others, when actually you're just being an ass.
A Chaos character's ideal method of saving people from the bandits would be to teach them how to kill bandits, preferably by challenging them somehow.
I picked vs Order over vs Tyranny because your hypothetical character is trying to make people stronger, rather than free them from the constraints of rules. He believes a civilisation which lets the weak die is a strong civilisation and that if you can take something from somebody by your own two hands, you deserve to. Order is the exact opposite of all that.
Laurfindel, Order isn't friendly with tyranny because Order is a more balanced, less extreme alignment. It tries to accommodate other people's beliefs, even if it doesn't agree with them. What's good in the eyes of Order is whatever's good for people, although it may well think it knows better than they do.
In the eyes of an Order character, Tyranny most likely looks like Order gone hideously wrong, because Order is the alignment of the system serving the people and Tyranny is the alignment of the people serving the system. They're opposites, in many ways.
An OvsT character would look at Tyranny as their own beliefs twisted back on themselves, corrupted or otherwise gone horribly wrong. If a tv show had a hero who stood for Order, the villain who was his opposite in every way would stand for Chaos, while the dark version of him would stand for Order.
"We're not so different, you and I, let's join forces and rule the galaxy", says the Tyranny villain to the Order hero. If the Order hero agrees, that's when his alignment changes.
Liberty DOES like Order.
The two moderate alignments like each other and are liked twice overall because they're the alignments who try to accommodate others. Tyranny and Chaos simply don't play nice and define good and evil in terms of freedom and obedience, rather than of everybody getting along.
I seem to have gone into more detail on 3 of the four major alignment components and you're right, it does need more explanation, so here's Liberty too:
Liberty is simply the alignment of letting other people do what they want. It's about freedom for everyone and the right to do what you please, so long as you don't abuse freedom by taking it from others.
Liberty is Chaos with limits.
Chaos believes in the freedom to take freedom from others (by eating their legs, for example), but Liberty believes that some rules are required to maintain the maximum possible amount of freedom.
This is why Chaos is an extreme alignment and has more in common with Tyranny, while Liberty is a moderate alignment and is closer to Order: Chaos believes in the freedom to control others, while Liberty believes in using rules to free people.
This doesn't mean that Tyranny and Chaos don't loath each other, of course. Look at fascist and communist regimes and you'll see they have a lot in common too, in spite of being bitter enemies and opposites in many ways.
Order and Liberty, meanwhile, are perfectly capable of getting on with each other. Order thinks freedom is fine, probably even a good thing, so long as it doesn't harm anybody. Meanwhile, Liberty thinks rules are acceptable and even necessary, just so long as they protect peoples' freedom.
That's not to say they'll always play well together, only that they're capable of happily coexisting.
Finally, unaligned is the alignment of nihilism and apathy, of believing in nothing, or believing in doing nothing.
While I doubt it'll come up much, it also covers trying to keep all the other alignment elements in balance.
Gah. Typos of confusion!
In my second paragraph addressed to Laurefindle, I meant to say
"An OvsT character would look at Tyranny as their own beliefs twisted back on themselves, corrupted or otherwise gone horribly wrong. If a tv show had a hero who stood for Order, the villain who was his opposite in every way would stand for Chaos, while the dark version of him would stand for Tyranny."
At some point, I'll probably re-write this rambling into a more structured explanation of the system. Particularly if people are interested.
So Liberty and order are the two main "alignments", and tyranny and chaos are two "corrupted" versions?
A list of each alignment complete with its grim noble balanced variable would help in understanding it. Each alignment (technically 24 different ones if the math gods bless me) with a short descriptor to sum it up please.
So far I like.
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Liberty and Order are not "main" and Tyranny and Chaos are not "corrupted" in the objective sense. The corruption comment was meant as an example of how an Order character might see Tyranny.
Nepherti, you're right. I should do that. Here goes:
LvT: Characters with this alignment will largely do what they want, not what they're "supposed" to do. They see freedom as everybody's right, so if ever they try to restrict the actions of others, they do so to protect their freedom, or that of a third party.
LvT characters think evil is all about forcing your values or desires on others. If you steal freedom or stop people from doing anything besides hurting an unwilling victim, you're doing wrong in the eyes of the LvT crowd. If not, you're probably ok.
They tend to be open minded, accepting and tolerant of all but intolerance , but it's not all sunshine and rainbows. These guys likely oppose rules against dangerous activities (seatbelt laws, suicide...) and may disagree with you (or pretty much everybody) about what's "harmless" (bear baiting, weed, duelling, incest...).
In a society they consider oppressive, they can be disruptive or even extremely dangerous, not least because they will always choose freedom over security and compliance. If forced, LvT characters will choose Chaos over Tyranny, tearing the entire system down and leaving people to fight over cans of food.
Grim characters with this alignment can be frighting indeed. V, from V for Vendetta (the original graphic novel), is the most iconic example that comes to mind.
He's an anarchist willing to send an entire civilisation spiralling into chaos if he can't stop it smothering people, but he sees the chaos itself as a necessary evil at best. He'd rather have order and safety if possible, but he would never consider sacrificing liberty to obtain them.
The heroes of The Matrix would be a good bet too, but that's less clear cut, and they're about truth has well as liberty.
LvT-G is a legal alignment for anti-paladins, who would smite TvL and TvC foes (assuming their smite changes to Evil, since otherwise, in this relative system anti-paladins would smite those who share their own beliefs).
Noble LvT characters are more like the Discordian Movement (either the real one or the only-probably-real global conspiracy in the Robert Anton Wilson novels).
They have essentially the same goals as the Grim fellows, including their desire to defeat tyranny, but they're unwilling to resort to the methods Chaos unless the alternative is mind-boggling horrendous, believing that people would then need freeing from THEM. They're usually much kinder and more huggable too.
LvC: Characters with this alignment are all about live and let live. their ideal lifestyle or society is similar to that of to LvT characters and they are almost as keen on doing their own thing.
The main difference is they focus more on freeing people from each other than from rulers or disembodied systems of rules. In their eyes, abuse of freedom is the main obstacle in the way of an ideal, free lifestyle.
If LvT aligned characters trumpet "People are free to do anything except take the freedom of others!", people of LvC alignment cry out "People are free to do anything except take the freedom of others!".
Their idea of evil is less about forcing your views on others and more about throwing out those last few rules which separate man from monster. The villains in their personal narratives are predatory moneylenders and destructive orc gangs, those who take personal freedom thing so far that someone get hurts and then shrug and do it again.
A possible candidate for a character who follows this alignment is Jack from Fight Club, who fought for an LvC cause once he worked out what was really going on in the movie. He was most probably Noble, since I don't see him accepting Tyranny as the cost of freedom from Chaos, or otherwise being much of a dick to anybody once his actions became LvC aligned.
If anybody has better examples of characters matching this alignment description, that would be great.
This is pretty exhausting, so I'll leave it at that for now and post some more later. I'll do Tyranny or Chaos next.
EDIT: I'm open to ideas about how best to assign outsider races, so if anybody has a clever idea, please say so.
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If it needs this much explaining it might not work so well.
People more or less get Good-Evil and Law-Chaos without explanation. There's a few debates about whether a "Good" character should be merciful or punish wrongdoing, or whether being obsessively organized makes you "lawful." But the broad strokes are obvious.
Your system is not obvious. It's going to be hard for your players to understand what these alignments mean.
I like the "Noble vs Grim" axis, though.
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I think it's brilliant. It's a bit tangly, the terms and their relationships aren't as easy to grasp as traditional alignment. But, once you do, it makes more sense and is more real than alignment.
Of course, at that point you could just as easily drop AL all together, but I appreciate the "relativity" of your system. Where, everyone has their own personal "good" and "evil". That's the real world.
I would prefer to see this instead with more possible alignments, like the Allegiance system from d20 Modern. If every character's alignment were described as one Allegiance in opposition to another, you'd end up with far more combinations and a deeper understanding of what they mean.
For instance, Nature versus Peace describes me much closer than Chaos versus Order, and easily differentiates me from someone who represents Nature versus Tyranny or Tyranny versus Peace.
Viktyr, what you're talking about sounds pretty good, but it's a totally different idea, with different goals.
You guys saying it's too complex, you may have a point, but honestly I think the problem is not with the ideas; it's with how they're described. This was WAY easier to invent than put into words. Rather than continue like this I'm going to work out what I need to say, edit it and reorganise it to see if I can't make it simpler and clearer.
I would say that yes, people "get" the standard alignment system very quickly, but that's because it's shallow and badly defined. There's nearly nothing there to get in the first place.
Good and evil are almost meaningless. They usually amount to enemy and friend, or worse, wholesome and yucky. Law and chaos are both so vague that in all but the most extreme cases you could call most characters from fiction either of the two.
The whole system does almost no work for your game, so the more important people's ideals, motivations and beliefs become, the less well the system that's intended to categorise them works.
I don't think that's ok. If pathfinder needs alignment at all, it needs it to be more complex and in-depth.
Viktyr, what you're talking about sounds pretty good, but it's a totally different idea, with different goals.
You guys saying it's too complex, you may have a point, but honestly I think the problem is not with the ideas; it's with how they're described. This was WAY easier to invent than put into words. Rather than continue like this I'm going to work out what I need to say, edit it and reorganise it to see if I can't make it simpler and clearer.
I would say that yes, people "get" the standard alignment system very quickly, but that's because it's shallow and badly defined. There's nearly nothing there to get in the first place.
Good and evil are almost meaningless. They usually amount to enemy and friend, or worse, wholesome and yucky. Law and chaos are both so vague that in all but the most extreme cases you could call most characters from fiction either of the two.
The whole system does almost no work for your game, so the more important people's ideals, motivations and beliefs become, the less well the system that's intended to categorise them works.
I don't think that's ok. If pathfinder needs alignment at all, it needs it to be more complex and in-depth.
Before I say anything else, let me reiterate that I like your approach; boiling down alignment into the salient viewpoints.
But I just wanted to add that I see a lot more "beneath the surface" of the traditional alignments. Otherwise, I would have dumped it or switched to something along these lines.
For instance, I seized upon the Nine Alignments to craft a cosmology and pantheon. The most powerful (Creator) deity was Neutral, with four greater deities at the 'cross points' of LN, CN, NG, and NE. Lesser powers formed 'fusions' at the 'corners': LG, CG, LE, and CE.
However, when I built the deities to represent these dry codes, they came alive. LN is Order, defining true chaos with rules to build the foundations of the cosmos. NG is Life, light, healing, creation. NE is death, darkness, decay, entropy. Whereas, the fusions become (LE)Tyranny, (LG)Justice, (CE)Strife/betrayal, and (CG)Freedom.
Finally, there are two demigods for each of these major deities to cater to more specific areas of influence.
Anyway, there's a lot more to each god, but the point is that the simple alignments can represent much more subtle (and realistic) things than they sometimes seem to.
-My two