I have made it to what I consider about 2/3 of the way through my game design.
Left is a ton of spells of all sorts, Finishing up my troublesome social resolution mechanic, creating boundaries for each character class and working out their "moves" (or feats - if one must call them that term)  but immediately on the table is alignment.
Should I include one? If so what kind?
I'll admit that most of the games I have played have had either similar ways of handling it or no alignment system what-so-ever.
I have seen that in my group most people have a character design in mind with some sort of history and manners that reflect it, while others attempt (and fail or succeed) to kill people just for saying something rude to them although they have chosen a "neutral" alignment [sup](specifically because while they want to do good mostly - they want the option to kill a guy for saying the wrong thing also etc)[/sup]

So I am honestly just being lazy in my research here. I figure that this is more than likely a well-discussed topic and everyone here has an opinion on it/an alignment system worked out for there own games they would love to brag about ugh,  I mean Share. ;)

So I hope this meets posting requirements but.. Lay them on me. I am wide open and have no preference.

ALSO: THANKS in advance.

[glow=red,2,300]Okay here is where I give some, so far as I think, useless information about my system in case it somehow affects alignment for some peoples systems [/glow]

[font=impact]NONE OF THESE THINGS BELOW ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE[/font] - don't bother suggesting they do. If they do change it will NOT be to accommodate Alignment. no matter how clever.

My System:
uses XP
makes use of character levels
uses characteristics (stats/abilties/etc)
uses hit points (health)
is set in a fantasy setting much like those used for D&D
allows multiple races (elves gnomes etc)
can have a setting with multiple societies with different social standards and mannerisms
will include magic as a part of life for player characters
has no end game mechanic
does not allow for characters to "conjure" items from an inventory (must use only whats listed)
makes use of healing potions
does not exclude the possibility of prophecies or divinations
does not exclude creatures who would be considered "evil" (vampires, demons etc)
does not exclude dragons or elves as part of the culture (though I am sick to death of them .. ugh.. and vampires too - especially vampires)
that last one was just me venting.
Inforces requirements to be a class (ex: must have x Agility to be a Rogue class)
Does not allow Multiclassing past 2 classes without severely effecting XP distrbution and therefore leveling speed.
and lastly
Its designed with heroes in mind rather than villains - this does not mean that a person cannot be selfish or ruthless and  still be a hero.
nor does it meant that a party of Pillaging rapists cannot campaign. It just means that the system is geared more towards heroes.

as I said - none of this probably matters..
Any questions about any of it that doesn't have to do with alignment will be ignored.

I really don't see the point of making an alignment system. Asshat players will be asshat players, so there really isn't a social contract advantage and rarely is there ever a mechanical advantage to having one. The only time I've seen it come up is magic or magic items specifically targeting  only good or only evil characters/creatures.

I think that if the question is "should I put an alignment system in my game because other games do it", the answer is a loud "NO".  It's your game. If you wanted to do things exactly like another game system, why bother creating a new game?

The real question should be: "there is something that I want in my game that need rules about alignments?"

This "thing" should not be in any form the "control of difficult players": alignment systems are and were always absolutely useless in this (there are countless thread about this in this forum, but the quick answer to why it's so is "because the group social contract rule over the rules, not the other way around"). Even worse than useless, often.  The reason for having alignment rules in the first place should be that they have a role to play in the game experience you want.

For example: in the "Pendragon" game, there is a system of "character traits", tied in couples (like courageous/coward, avid/generous, etc.) with values that change during the game to "map" the behavior of the character, because in Arthurian Fantasy, it does matter if a character is chaste or lustful, for example. But a similar complex system of character trait would be not only completely useless, but even out-of-place, in a Lankhmar-style setting, or even in a Conan-inspired game.

As you can see from my example, I am not talking only about D&D-style alignment systems (with the usual axis law/chaos and good/evil), but more in general about traits that map the behavior of a character. This, because in my opinion the D&D-style alignment are a very, very poor example of this kind of "mapping", so even if you think that you need an "alignment system", I would urge you to explore other kind of "alignment systems", less crude and more tied to your specific game.

Well, not really an opinion but more facts on the matter (facts like if you stick your hand in the fire it will get burned is a fact, rather than opinion). What many alignment systems come down to is this - the player is in absolute control, supposedly, of what his character wants. But the rule, in practical terms is, the GM at whim can say no, your character doesn't want that. So effectively the GM is playing the character and the player is simply a caretaker. It's practically at the point of an audience/entertainer model - thus ceasing to be 'play' (or is as much play as the last entertainer you went to who used some audience participation). But by and large gamers don't want to determine any base facts about the activites they call roleplay and instead think design is about opinions only and finding people who echo the same opinions (as if if everyone or everyone in a group echo's the same opinion, it mysteriously becomes the fact of the matter (probably encouraged by utterances of 'lumpley principle' or what the LP ever was to begin with))

Yeah, I know, it "isn't whim!" and "based on what makes sense(tm)". Take this for example - if you shoot a pistol forward and drop a bullet at the same time, which will hit the ground first? You will  likely give the wrong answer. But if your answer makes so much sense, how can it be wrong? Because it's just a whim in your head, rather than factual sense.

And that's what happens with alignment adjudication 'A neutral alignment would never kill someone for that' - it might make alot of sense to you in your head, but it's just a whim, a hypothesis you invented. Because until you test what 'makes sense' in the real world, it doesn't make sense, it just seems like it will make sense. Roleplay games and culture seems to thrive off the conceit people harbour that if something makes sense to them, then it must be true(tm) rather than an invented hypothesis/fantasy/whim in their head that has not yet been tested. RP culture seems to thrive off being philosophically short sighted and confusing fantasy with fact. 'Alignment' is one of the beacons for this 'culture'.

Here's some ideas from my blog posts last year where I looked at a couple of options for values that might drive a character's actions. I thought I had a specific post about alignments as well, but since I can't find it at the moment...maybe that was written up on a forum somewhere rather than on my blog.

Scales of Morality

Virtues and Vices

Other versions of "alignment" could be the humanity and path systems from the oWoD Vampire: Sabbat and Vampire: Dark Ages games, where players made deliberate choices about the optimal virtues for their characters, and always fought to preserve these virtues lest they fall to the sway of their inner demons...

So, in other words, while some might say that "Alignment" isn't important as a concept in a game, a lot of games do drive at the same type of ideas from different directions. Choose the direction that's right for your game.

I personally like the 9 tiered alignment system of earlier editions of Dungeons and Dragons.  I think that, for players who enjoy breathing life into their characters, alignment serves as a strong reference point for a character's actions.  However, I think the system collapses when its users perceive alignment in an oversimplified, linear fashion: e.g. good means you do only virtuous things, evil means you only do morally reprehensible things, and neutral means you do a little of both, but you go out of your way to not favor either too much (an absurd notion; even more absurd is DnD's explanation of how neutrals actually switch sides during an armed conflict to keep the balance).

In my opinion, alignment works best with players who actually intend to simulate genuine human behavior.  Therefore, I believe a complex alignment system should reflect a game with a serious tone (not necessarily sober, but intended to immerse you into the setting).  Conversely, a game intended to feel like a game would do well to eschew alignment altogether.

James Raggi has an alignment based on Law, Neutral & Chaos that I think rocks. It's for his (let me try & remember) "Weird [something]" campaign rules, which is in beta (or was a couple weeks ago).

Sorry for being so vague. I'm at work and his site's filtered so I can't look it up. URL is:

http://lotfp.blogspot.com/

Basically, his version is almost pure Michael Moorcock (the creator of the Elric novels etc, in which he invented the Chaos-Neutral-Law value system on which original D&D based it's alignment system).

Raggi's system is all tied into Cthulhu-like horrors from the outer void, and you either are trying to help or at least bargain with these guys (Chaos), trying to fight them in a kind of doomed way (Law) or don't care/know about them (Neutral, the vast majority of humans).

I'm probably over-simplifying, but basically that's how I remember it. Oh--and if you're a magic-user, you have to be Chaotic.

Loved it.

Cheers, charles

Rather than a D&Dish alignment system, what if you gave the players opportunities for their characters to enter into "contracts" with the supernatural entities in the setting. With defined bonuses, drawbacks, and penalties for unfaithfulness.

So GM whim is lessened, and and in fact disagreement between the players idea of morality and their patron's idea  could be an interesting source of conflict and fun, rather than scuffles about what "Lawful" means.

And you can have different religions and philosophies claiming to be "Good" and.or "True" but at one anothers throats.

Just thought about this. (mostly cause I haven't played a priest in years)
I get together with a group and we play Ad&d every once in a while.
This DM has a bunch of homemade rules he has worked into the game over the years.
One thing is this weird alignment "slider" (thats what he calls it)
its a part of a spellsheet that he made.
If anyone has played console or computer based RPG's probably have seen something like it. (kotor is 1 i believe - fable another)
He really only does this for priests.
He keeps up with your deeds be they good or evil and calculates whether you make a shift up or down in alignment.
looks something like this.
Evil |-------------------O----------------| Good
(but much nicer - nothing actually slides on it .. you just color in a section of how good or evil you are - shown by the O above)

Depending on your god (as a priest) which at least for us is good aligned mostly
you loose divine power the further you stray from your gods ideals.
I don't recall how he enforces that though.
(I want to say it rewinds your levels - as far as magic goes. - ex: a level 6 priest has the powers that a 3rd level priest would)
I might ask him how that works. As I am a fan of thieves and fighters.
I currently play a shaman - which the DM made up as well. - i just can't remember.

anyone ever seen this sort of "slider" before?

Got any ideas how this might be used in game design?

I'll say that I am not creating my system around a particular world. Only fantasy ones.
It could be used for a game set in middle earth or Forgotten realms or a homemade planet or planet of the apes westeros, midkemia, the six duchies or where ever.
If there are swords and magic -my hope is that it will work.
So as far as players having to drink the blood of some evil force to gain entrance to some elite group and have to fight off the evil they have consumed (I think a buddy said something like that - trying to get me to run a green ronin rpg based on the video game DragonAge)
well there is no need to establish some sort of alignment mechanism for that kind of thing. I imagine that that would come with the setting or campaign as the GM sees fit.

In my own system I'm developing I have done an "alignment system".  I dislike the classic D&D alignment as it is not as Character-centric as it possibly could be and had so many useless grey areas.  The two axes I wanted to include were: 1. How systematic and ordered does my character believe/want the world around them to be? 2. How me-centric am I and how me-centric should everyone else be?

Axis 1 provides their love of order.  This allows for mentally-ill people to be highly ordered (obsessive compulsive disorder for example). Which didn't appear in D&D (OCD made you Chaotic because you were insane, apparently).
Ordered People: Love systems, expect that things work the same as they did in the past, assume people will act predictably
Neutral People: No particular love or expectation of things being ordered, predictable or systematic
Chaotic People: Love free-choice, assume that new situations require new solutions, assume that people will make different decisions even when the same events happen.

Axis 2 provides their sense of altruism and selfishness. Good = altruistic (expects it of others). Neutral = some altruism "Evil" = others exist to benefit me and I have few altruistic feelings.

Yes, I do use alignment concepts in relation to magic items and spells.

Hi Necromantis!  (sorry, but what's your first name? I feel silly calling you "Necromantis"...)

Necromantis wrote:
I'll say that I am not creating my system around a particular world. Only fantasy ones.
It could be used for a game set in middle earth or Forgotten realms or a homemade planet or planet of the apes westeros, midkemia, the six duchies or where ever.
If there are swords and magic -my hope is that it will work.
So as far as players having to drink the blood of some evil force to gain entrance to some elite group and have to fight off the evil they have consumed (I think a buddy said something like that - trying to get me to run a green ronin rpg based on the video game DragonAge)
well there is no need to establish some sort of alignment mechanism for that kind of thing. I imagine that that would come with the setting or campaign as the GM sees fit.

If you want to expand the slider concept to include Law & Chaos, give everyone a big cross with Law <-> Chaos on one axis & Good <-> Evil on the other.

Do a short list of significant behaviors for Lw, Chaos, Good & Evil respecitively, with an ascending point value.

Then, everytime someone performs one of these acts, move the marker that represents the PC's moral state in the direction indicated. Ie: Killing someone in cold blood is a 3-pt evil action, so move them 3 squares toward the "Evil" quadrant. And so on. When you move into another quadrant, you "officially" change alignment

Basically, the slider you mentioned abvove but with 2 axes instead of 1.

Re: getting it to work for non-clerics, you just have to provide meaningful in-game consequences for current alignment. The key word is "meaningful". I'm not a big fan of the approach of earlier eds of D&D, ie XP penalties or "losing your alignment language" (which I think is a ludicrous concept anyway). The reason I think these are lame (while the paladin & cleric penalities for alignment change, frex, are not) is that for the clerics & pallies, alignment was actually woven into the character concept. It meant something in the context of the game, and penalties could be tied to specific in-game effects.

To do that with all PCs regardless of class, you would need to make alignment intrinsic to all PC char concepts, and then deliver mechanics that reflected that. In effect, that would mean hinging your game around some kind of moral compass. Alignment would have to take center stage.

If you don't want to do that, then I say yeah, ditch it or marginalize it.

As Mike Holmes used to say: "Figure out what your game is about, then gloss the rest."

Charles

[tt]    Sentiment|------------------------|Detachment
    Observant|------------------------|Inattentive
  Benevolent|------------------------|Selfish
Compassionate|------------------------|Cruel
    Interest|------------------------|Apathy
    Restraint|------------------------|Indulgence
        Tidy|------------------------|Unkempt
    Confident|------------------------|Unsure
    Trusting|------------------------|Suspicious
      Mellow|------------------------|Volatile
[/tt]

Some Ideas to play with.

Not in a D&D Matrix Type configuration though.
More like the example Vulpinoid Provided

Vulpinoid wrote:
Scales of Morality

The thing with that slider, is is it just a representative of whether your god thinks your good or evil (much like NN's suggestion), or whether supposedly you are good or evil?

Callan wrote:
The thing with that slider, is is it just a representative of whether your god thinks your good or evil (much like NN's suggestion), or whether supposedly you are good or evil?

Well, then to me it becomes really interesting! Though I'm thinking in narrativist terms. Morals of a man vs morals of a god...ahhhh....I'd be burned at the stake for saying that two centuries ago... >:)

I'm actually trying to get away from alignments altogether with a new system I'm tinkering with. Instead I'm using Personality types: Friendly, Warm, Casual, Cold, and Threatening. These different types give bonuses/penalties to different interactions the characters might have with NPCs when trying to persuade, charm, or intimidate. So while a threatening character will have an easier time to intimidate someone, they'll have a harder time trying to charm another. I'm planning on working out a system that accounts for the personality of the npc being acted upon, so that trying to intimidate somebody else with a threatening personality won't work so well, etc... But that could get a tad clunky.

It seems to me that alignments are a nice way to get characters to follow the script (i.e. you're good, you need to go on this adventure to save the princess), but real life rarely has any neatly defined alignments to go off of, life's full of moral paradoxes that don't fit into any nice categories. Of course I'm probably just shooting myself in the foot with this system because everybody will just default to Selfish, but that's how most of our group's games go anyways, so I doubt anyone will notice.

Sounds cool. A lot easier to roleplay I believe. I still play a regular AD&D game every few weeks and we bring in new players everyone once and a while and just explaining the differences to some people is impossible. And nearly always they pick Chaotic Neutral. I knew I didn't want to use Something like that in my system.
Oh a side note: The green Ronin publishing game "a song of ice and fire roleplaying" (another regular game I am running every other weekend) There is something similar to what you are proposing. Its not used as a character build mechanism though. Its more about social encounters. they are called Dispostions -- ex: Tomin feels Friendly towards Clarise - Clarise how ever is indifferent towards Tomin - Clarise is going to have an easier time(+3 modifier) performing Persuasion techniques (Convince, Bargain, etc) and a harder time of deception (act, bluff, etc) --- you should take a look at the system - It might give you some ideas. Its a pretty solid game but the book was arrange In my opinion poorly and its touch too colorful for a game set in the bleak world of westeros (From Fantasy/Sci-Fi author George R.R. Martin) Green Ronin has a free quick start book you can look over in PDF formon their website so its free research.

I just got done with A Feast for Crows last night, definitely going to look into the Game of Thrones rpg. Although I was kinda pissed when I read the last part in Feast when RR Martin says to expect the next book within a year (back in 2005 he was saying this). Even worse is that the only things he talks about on his blog is casting for the upcoming hbo series.

The idea of Dispositions sounds interesting although I'm curious how it's decided what a person's disposition is towards another character and if that's static throughout the game or if it changes over time? It seems like a system like that you'd have to know how every character feels towards every other character before they even meet just to know how their conversations would pan out. 

I wanted to get away from alignment's b/c they just weren't coming into play all that often, which is probably the GMs fault more than anybody else's for not enforcing them. We game with the Palladium system mostly and there's definitely subtle nuances between the different alignments that I can barely tell the difference between them, and forget about newbies trying to pick up on them. If anything just simplify alignments between good, selfish, and evil. Alignment always seems like one of those background/flavor traits that you pick in the beginning and forget about afterwards because it has no tangible effects on play. I'm more of a numbers guy and like to see traits that have a real bearing on mechanics. In the end it probably just depends on how much roll-playing vs role-playing you have in your games.

I'm curious how it's decided what a person's disposition is towards another character and if that's static throughout the game or if it changes over time?