Alignments

[jade von delioch]

So i have always felt that the alignment system in palladium was the best out there, except that i also felt that Good and Selfish alignments was a little out numbered by the evil ones.
So what i was thinking was if there were 1 or two more in good and selfish alignments what would they be?

[Dog_O_War]

So i have always felt that the alignment system in palladium was the best out there, except that i also felt that Good and Selfish alignments was a little out numbered by the evil ones.
So what i was thinking was if there were 1 or two more in good and selfish alignments what would they be?

"Petty" selfish and "too good" good are the only things I could come up with.

Petty indicating the type of guy that might lend you money in-private, but then hold it above your head in public. The type that'll back-stab you over a woman, but stick to his guns over turning you into the authorities (likely out of a momentary sense of pride).

Too Good is a great way to say "stupid-good". The guy at the table that plays a D&D Paladin as "lawful-stupid". What this amounts to is that he'll openly attack any evil opponent (as long as he's sure they are evil), never ever ally or get captured by an evil opponent (even if it's to destroy an even greater evil - then turning on this temporary ally), allow others to do evil, think evil, etc... Basically the morally justified super-duche. People already play this alignment, using the standard good alignments as the basis for this one.



Personally though, I don't think a player should know what their alignment actually is without a spell or psychic power being used (ie: detect alignment). That is, the GM should assign an alignment apon the player based on actions rather than what's on the character sheet. This way players will more actively think about their actions (is this really what my supposedly good character would do?), rather than rely on the "well my sheet says I'm good!" way of justification.

That way you don't need extra categories for you and your players to choose from; the GM makes the dicision based on what he sees your character do. That way all the private moments of kindness an otherwise gruff character might have can be rewarded.

[Nekira Sudacne]

So i have always felt that the alignment system in palladium was the best out there, except that i also felt that Good and Selfish alignments was a little out numbered by the evil ones.
So what i was thinking was if there were 1 or two more in good and selfish alignments what would they be?

3 good alignments and 2 selfish alignments are outnumbered by 3 evil alignments?

What math are you using?

[jade von delioch]

Principled and Scrupulous for good, Unprincipled and Anarchist for selfish.. I just feel that there should at least be one more good one if not for both of these to counter weight the three in evil.
I don't know where you are getting the 3? Unless there some arata done recently in some other "Rifts" book.

[drewkitty ~..~]

'petty' and 'to good' are character traits

there is a new alinements topic in the HU forum

[Nekira Sudacne]

Principled and Scrupulous for good, Unprincipled and Anarchist for selfish.. I just feel that there should at least be one more good one if not for both of these to counter weight the three in evil.
I don't know where you are getting the 3? Unless there some arata done recently in some other "Rifts" book.

You didn't say Rifts, you said Palladium, which indicates the megaverse.

In which case there is a third good alignment. Taoist, from Mystic China (Not Rifts China). They are basically good people who refuse to be burded by or with authority. Genearlly they will ignore laws, rules and authority figures whenever they think they can get away with it(Good or bad), but they will NOT do so purely for personal gain, and will fight to protect people and prevent harm from coming to others.

However, they are not selfish, they are never greedy and never really care for treasure. They are more interested in having fun than what others think of them (or their idea of fun). They tend to take the long veiw and genearlly beleive in letting people suffer mistakes so they can learn from them.

However, they WILL lie occasionally (Mostly for fun and setting up pranks, they will cheat if they feel it's necessary, and they veiw Promises and oaths and even friendships as things to be re-evaluated in light of changing circumstances.

In short, they are good people who don't beleive in letting others tell them how to live their lives and just as indifferent to telling people how to live theirs. They don't care about money, luxury, or rewards, but they beleive in keeping the world around them happy, healthy, and generally a good place to live. Which more often than not means getting rid of evil.

[jade von delioch]

I never thought about the Taoist- i thought the book made it pretty obvious that only the Taoist OCC could have that alignment. I will admit it has been some time since i read that book, but i think that how it works. In turn how does that work for everyone else in the megaverse?

[Nekira Sudacne]

I never thought about the Taoist- i thought the book made it pretty obvious that only the Taoist OCC could have that alignment. I will admit it has been some time since i read that book, but i think that how it works. In turn how does that work for everyone else in the megaverse?

There is no Taoist OCC, and it says plainly it's an alignment for the entire megaverse. Not everyone of the taoist alignment is necessarly a follower of Taoism or seeking enlightenment, it's simply a veiw of the world.

[jade von delioch]

no, your right. its just been awhile since i look at the book. i was thinking of the Tao Shih PCC and for some reason i kept thinking they were restricted to the Taoist alignment.
This doesn't change the fact that i feel there should be more alignment choices. But the Taoist does help none the less. Taoist seems like a alignment between scrupulous and unprincipled. I think there should be one between principled and scrupulous.

[Nekira Sudacne]

no, your right. its just been awhile since i look at the book. i was thinking of the Tao Shih PCC and for some reason i kept thinking they were restricted to the Taoist alignment.
This doesn't change the fact that i feel there should be more alignment choices. But the Taoist does help none the less. Taoist seems like a alignment between scrupulous and unprincipled. I think there should be one between principled and scrupulous.

There's three good and two selfish and you still think 3 evil unbalance them?

I think you just want more choices to avoid being pidgenholed in certain restrictions when you want the rest but not all of them.

[Gryphon Chick]

I never thought about the Taoist- i thought the book made it pretty obvious that only the Taoist OCC could have that alignment. I will admit it has been some time since i read that book, but i think that how it works. In turn how does that work for everyone else in the megaverse?

There is no Taoist OCC, and it says plainly it's an alignment for the entire megaverse. Not everyone of the taoist alignment is necessarly a follower of Taoism or seeking enlightenment, it's simply a veiw of the world.

It's actually a pretty cool alignment to play.

[jade von delioch]

The only problem with some of that is that there is no reason for players to even play their alignments or penalties for having your alignment change......

[jade von delioch]

The only problem with some of that is that there is no reason for players to even play their alignments or penalties for having your alignment change......

The GM is responsible for making sure PC's stick to their alignments, it's also the GM's job to reward or penalize a player who brakes from their alignment.

I've found nothing works better than a large xp. reward or penalty. That is with my players though, other groups are different.

Rewarding players can become a problem itself and can cause problems in itself.
However, a while back i was working on (for palladium) a mechanic involving the alignments where in the character whose alignment was to change (either good, self, or bad) would suffer the affects of that psychological change depending upon the amount of the change. Maybe i should get back to that at some point. The basic idea was that when a character's alignment changed there had to be some kind of psychological dilemma taking place that caused the change to begin with. so the penalties would be an after affact caused by this mental dilemma that was still settling in the persons mind. the greater the change, the harsher the penalties. The penalties would be represent the lack of focus due to this change. On top of that, so that there can be more role playing involved, there would be all these little echos from the players previous alignment that haunted them for a short time causing them to second guess themselves. It was a lot to work on though, which is why i did not get very far into it.

A gm could try to enforce the alignments, but players are not afraid of GMs.. And ya, you could take xp way for it, but thats like stealing in a way. Palladium awards xp for rolingplaying, you don't have to give it if they don't deserve it- but this is the only area that has anything for this situation, it would be theift for taking from their killing a minor threat xp total.

[Dog_O_War]

For an alignment-change system, maybe it depends on how quickly/slowly they go about doing it.

For instance, the player with a good-aligned character all of a sudden decided that killing (in cold blood) the family of the man that murdered his family is acceptable. Along the way he has to blow away a dozen cops. Basically he's tipped the bucket and gone loco. This type of randomness is indicative of both a sudden alignment change and an insanity.

This is a two-way street too; badguys all of a sudden gaining a conscience and turning good would go through something of a super-guilt trip over all the bad things they've done, and thus gain an insanity.

The thing here though is that the longer it takes for an alignment change to happen, the less chance of an insanity occuring. A good guy might start with a "rebellion" fighting against the CS, but gradually he's tasked with certain terrorist acts, like bombings and such - things that might claim an innocent life or two. Eventually he'll do anything for the cause, which includes performing out-and-out murders, which ofcourse constitutes an alignment change.

Really, it'd be waaaay too hard to develop this into an adamant system, but rather this is the kind of thing a GM should look out for. If a guy is flip-flopping between good and evil all the time, give him an insanity. If he's followed the path of good intentions, maybe ease off on the insanity.

[J. Lionheart]

What the "Passive," "Taoist," and "Washed-out" alignments sound like to me are cop-outs. They're ways for players to avoid making decisions in-character, and just do whatever they feel like while claiming it is their alignment.

Taoist: "Oh sure, I'm good, I just don't follow the law when I don't want to, don't commit to anything, and don't bother paying attention to what others do." Basically a two-bit coward of a character with no principles, and a player who wants to claim they're being "good" without actually being good.

Passive Anarchist: "I do whatever I feel like it, and nobody can tell me otherwise! As long as nobody's watching that is." Basically a two-bit coward of a character with no princples, and a player who wants to claim they're being a "rebel" without actually being a rebel.

Repeat for others.

In these cases, the additional alignments seem very wishy-washy, and are basically ways to weasel out of committing to anything. The Palladium alignment system is full of absolutes, and these additional alignments are ways for players to try and avoid the responsibility of upholding those. I'm no fan of absolutism IRL, but these are games full of heros and villains - let's have them stand for something.



Re: the "Petty" and "Too Good" designations, those sound more like dispositions than alignments to me. The Alignment is the character's beliefs, the Disposition is the personality. I'd put both of those down as personalities. "Petty" sounds like it'd be paired with either of the selfish alignments, while "Too Good" as described is a blatent pairing for Aberrant.

[J. Lionheart]

Alignments affect, and are affected by, choices.

In your example of using Horror Factor or another means of paralyzing a person so they have no ability to assist, they aren't making a choice not to help the innocent. They probably would love to and are trying to, but it is beyond their ability. That is something that is likely to play upon the character's psyche and cause a severe guilt trip, but it doesn't make them a bad person, and has no effect on their alignment. We can't mistake a magical effect like HF with cowardice. Cowardice is when you have the ability to do something but don't - it's a choice. Horror Factor is a game mechanic that actually prevents you from taking action. If you want a quick gut-check, ask yourself if it was the character who was stricken with fear in a game mechanics sense, or just the player who chickened out because they didn't feel like doing something? That's my gripe with the aforementioned alignments - they give the player a way to use their own lilly-liveredness and claim it is the character's.

In your second example, regarding insanity, that again is a matter of choice. If a character is truly insane in the game sense, they don't have a choice over what they're doing, so it doesn't make them bad. It's almost like having two characters - the normal character, and the one who is in the grips of the insanity. One should be very careful to distinguish between situations where the character is actually compelled to take action by their insanity, and those where the player tries to use it to his advantage to get away with things he wouldn't otherwise. The former has no alignment effect, the latter deserves a smackdown.

I agree with your statement that those who feel chained by an alignment haven't looked deeply enough in to their character. The outlines of the alignments are spelled out very clearly - take time, while constructing, to decide which one is right for your character.

I'm a fan of Dog's suggestion earlier that players not even know their own alignment, that it be something only the GM knows, but I agree with the critique that it could result in less focused play. Unless there are some regular and noticeable effects due to character alignment built in to a game, players are likely to simply not care, instead of standing up for things, which is the opposite of what I'm campaigning for here. If more things in a game had rune-weapon-like restrictions on alignments, then you'd see some serious effort going on.

[J. Lionheart]

A system I used for a while, for instant feedback, was I kept a stack of poker-chip style tokens alongside me as I GM'd. When somebody did something particularly cool, in-character, or otherwise noteworthy, I'd toss them a chip. Chips could be redeemed for super-hero advantage (a re-roll of a flubbed die roll), or held on to for XP at the end of the session. Another cool thing I ran in to at the last POH was doing the same sort of distribution, but of dice. You couldn't trade them in or anything, but they're dice! They have real, practical value, and all gamers love them.

[J. Lionheart]

You make excellent suggestions Elfgirl, and I like where you're going with it. As you're saying, you can take repeated failed HF rolls and decide to shape your character in to a coward, so that perhaps in the future, you'll avoid those situations. That's awesome, and certainly a good way to play the cards that you're dealt. It still comes back to choice, though The alignment change that might come would be a result of your choice to begin playing the character as a coward after repeatedly failing HF rolls, rather that resulting from the rolls themselves. You're taking a random thing, and incorporating it in to the choices your character makes in the future, rather than just repeatedly letting it be a lottery. Kudos

As for my reference of HF as a "magical" thing, I guess I should clarify the way I use it in my games. I feel that horror factor is extremely overused in the books, and illogical in many of its presentations. For example, if I march a platoon of recruits up to a hopper and order them to attack, something like 50% of my soldiers would be so cowed with fear, they would be unable to react (HF 10). A hopper is pretty much a malignant kangaroo-rat - it shouldn't scare anybody unless they're seeing a swarm of them in action or something! Silly over-uses like that turned me off to the entire HF thing, especially when dealing with groups of experienced adventurers and monster-hunters. I turned back to the old "use your common sense as a GM" thing and got rid of it except in cases of magic spells, incomprehensibly brutal situations, and truly terrifying or spectacular supernatural beasts like Dragons, Master Vampires, or pissed-off Tharsis. The Horror Factor ratings in the book are good baselines for ignorant NPC peasant children, but not so much for our globe-hopping super heroes.

From the sound of it, the movie example you have is a great example of HF in play, and a perfect example of what we've been discussing. The soldier who hid isn't a bad person for being afraid, and that guilt-trip from being afraid obviously played on him for a long time, resulting in his confession. He's still a good person, his alignment didn't change, but he had that tormented psyche I referenced in my first post about choice. Hiding didn't make him bad, but the actions he chooses to take take in the future as a result of psychological duress from it may!

[Cybermancer]

I think that alignments are too often enforced too rigidly. Given suitable circumstances I will allow a character to commit an action that is contrary to their alignment without a change in alignment. That is because I see an alignment as simply a descriptor of how a character normally acts or acts overall. Given the right criteria, anyone can behave out of character or have a lapse in judgement.

Also, I would never change someone's alignment based on things they had no control over, such as a failed horror factor save. Both the player and the character have no choice at that moment and I think that alignments are entirely about choices. Now, for someone who choses to run away, it's a different story.

Actually, I like the idea someone had upthread of not telling the players the alignments of their characters. Instead they secretly assigned alignments based on the characters actions. This makes a lot of sense to me.

Sometimes I wonder if the game wouldn't be better off without alignments or if they were made option devices to help describe the characters normal behavior.