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So I've been homebrewing an alternative to alignment in the fantasy game that I plan to run. I got some inspiration from a post I saw on GitP and ran with it. Here is the ruleset I have set up for my alignment alternative, Motives and Methods.
Don't worry about Detect and Smite abilities. I'll figure that out as I go along.
Thanks for any help and comments.
Those seem quite reasonable.
Thanks. I tried to keep them as morally neutral as possible, so that "good" and "evil" arguments don't crop up and players tend to play more like the motives and methods above, rather than morals.
A bit of a bump. I'm interested in what people think about this and what changes could be made to improve it.
I like what you are trying to do but I can't help drawing the altruistic-selfish line being good v evil and the conformist - unorthodox line being law and chaos with pragmatic being a neutral substitute.
I also liked elements of a system that Mortuum proposed but disagreed with his view that there were no in-game philosophies that were inherently evil and felt that he started to go off-track by changing his initial definitions of grim and principled.
The favourite system I ever saw was one in an early edition of White Dwarf, but have never been able to rediscover. The gist of it went that a player would pick and prioritise at least one up to a maximum of even motivations from a list of about 15 for his character. The motivations chosen would map back to where they sat on the good and evil axis, whilst the number chosen would map to the law v chaos axis. If the character picked less than 7 motivations then they picked up superstitions every [number of motivations picked] levels until their superstitions and motivations equalled 7. Superstitions were based on the activity that occurred during the adventure. As the player progressed, instead of being true to an alignment, which was mapped back for game effect purposes they were supposed to roleplay according to their motivations and superstitions.
I remember one player using the system who rolled up an Elven Assassin character. His motivations were Country, Queen and Race and would do anything to protect Celene from outside influences and had absolutely no qualms about killing 'short lived races who were going to die in a few brief decades anyway' to save a long-lived elf but didn't kill for fun. The character was NE in game terms but was not a liability to the party or the group because the motivations weren't destructive to the party goals.
I like what you are trying to do but I can't help drawing the altruistic-selfish line being good v evil and the conformist - unorthodox line being law and chaos with pragmatic being a neutral substitute.
I also liked elements of a system that Mortuum proposed but disagreed with his view that there were no in-game philosophies that were inherently evil and felt that he started to go off-track by changing his initial definitions of grim and principled.
The favourite system I ever saw was one in an early edition of White Dwarf, but have never been able to rediscover. The gist of it went that a player would pick and prioritise at least one up to a maximum of even motivations from a list of about 15 for his character. The motivations chosen would map back to where they sat on the good and evil axis, whilst the number chosen would map to the law v chaos axis. If the character picked less than 7 motivations then they picked up superstitions every [number of motivations picked] levels until their superstitions and motivations equalled 7. Superstitions were based on the activity that occurred during the adventure. As the player progressed, instead of being true to an alignment, which was mapped back for game effect purposes they were supposed to roleplay according to their motivations and superstitions.
I remember one player using the system who rolled up an Elven Assassin character. His motivations were Country, Queen and Race and would do anything to protect Celene from outside influences and had absolutely no qualms about killing 'short lived races who were going to die in a few brief decades anyway' to save a long-lived elf but didn't kill for fun. The character was NE in game terms but was not a liability to the party or the group because the motivations weren't destructive to the party goals.
In some ways, I was looking to draw allusions to these alignments towards the classic 3x3 without really making any of them really good or evil. So, two people could be, say, Conforming Altruistic, but one does good while the other does evil with it. Law vs chaos I find to be less of an issue in most games, but I definitely will try and reword Unorthodox and Conforming.
I think adding a third catagory, such as "Vows" could add a lot to this system. Unlike the other two they can be anything a GM approves. Vows would be the things most important to a character, such as "my daughter" or "my country"
This stops characters from being bi-polar when good and evil don't exist.
Have players pick personality traits from a well sized list and just use that as rp-tool and intelligent item conflicts etcetera.
I don't think your system is bad but there should be many more traits and methods to pick from.
You still can have alignment aura's and creature types to determine magic effect interactions in your campaign, in some cases you might want to adjust the level / cost of the spell / magical effect because of reduced or increased effectiveness.
The system is fine (although it feels like a re-skinned good/evil law/chaos axis honestly), but why not just remove the alignment system from your game entirely if it isn't going to have mechanical or moral implications? I don't think your system really achieves anything in terms of the wider game --> you might be better off just asking your players to write a short sentence each on their motives and methods instead of codifying them.
I don't know if alignments require rulesets. Much like real humans, just let the characters be who they are.
The game does not require it, depending on your play style. But you still need rules for interactions from a Rules perspective and from a Role Playing perspective which honestly works better if you determine character boundaries before hand (if your group cares about such a thing).
There's an clever old dragon article about motivations/priorities by alignment . I think it was called "Get Your Priorities Straight ". Edit: it's in Dragon # 173
There's an clever old dragon article about motivations/priorities by alignment . I think it was called "Get Your Priorities Straight ". Edit: it's in Dragon # 173
Thanking you for pointing out that article; it is quite similar to the one I read in White Dwarf
Dotting for later.
I think adding a third catagory, such as "Vows" could add a lot to this system. Unlike the other two they can be anything a GM approves. Vows would be the things most important to a character, such as "my daughter" or "my country"
This stops characters from being bi-polar when good and evil don't exist.
That's a pretty good idea. I'll have to think about how to do that one.
Have players pick personality traits from a well sized list and just use that as rp-tool and intelligent item conflicts etcetera.
I don't think your system is bad but there should be many more traits and methods to pick from.
You still can have alignment aura's and creature types to determine magic effect interactions in your campaign, in some cases you might want to adjust the level / cost of the spell / magical effect because of reduced or increased effectiveness.
Yeah, there is a more in depth part I'm writing up that is similar to this. I should post that up once I'm finished, after the holidays and all.
The system is fine (although it feels like a re-skinned good/evil law/chaos axis honestly), but why not just remove the alignment system from your game entirely if it isn't going to have mechanical or moral implications? I don't think your system really achieves anything in terms of the wider game --> you might be better off just asking your players to write a short sentence each on their motives and methods instead of codifying them.
With this, it's really a background generating tool for players and GMs to aid them in roleplaying how they would perceive their character. For those that like alignment, it is easier to play to one's alignment with this system, since the categories are less nebulous than 'good and evil'. For the most part, it's for my players that are coming from a Pathfinder/D&D background to ease them from the standard axis to something more free form. I actually do have a more detailed, free-form set of questions similar to something you'd see in more narrative driven games like Dungeon World or ICONS, but this is meant to be more like simple guidelines.
D20 Modern had a system of allegiances, which generally indicated your moral goals in place of D&D alignment. That's also worth a look, I think.
If you read the alignment page, you see clear references to motives over actions, no need to add it in when it exists.
If you read the alignment page, you see clear references to motives over actions, no need to add it in when it exists.
While true, it's less of me adding it and more of me removing the morals part. Basically removing the good and evil alignments in the game and really letting the players choose that from their actions. A buddy of mine joked that he could see all of my alignments finding a reason to let goblin babies live (or die).
If you read the alignment page, you see clear references to motives over actions, no need to add it in when it exists.While true, it's less of me adding it and more of me removing the morals part. Basically removing the good and evil alignments in the game and really letting the players choose that from their actions. A buddy of mine joked that he could see all of my alignments finding a reason to let goblin babies live (or die).
It still seems to me more that morals are formed in the characters and Good to Evil is more of outward tolerance to extremism and law vs chaotic is outward judgment and inward enforcement strictness to looseness even by the wording given. It even seems that your buddy recognizes the fact that it really is just player morals, after all there is no reason that the morals created by the character can be modeled or replicated after the morals of his/her god, the local law (for or against), or even the actual players outlook on life.