Just An Honest Question

[Nxla666]

I can play with or without them, but my experince has been that most players turn into homocidal maniacs without them.

[J. Lionheart]

Gotta have the alignments.

[Rimmerdal]

just a Good (indicating he's good), Selfish (Indicating he's selfish) and Evil (indicating he's Evil)

Sometimes good guys act like bad guys and bad guys act like good guys..

[Killer Cyborg]

I can play with or without them, but my experince has been that most players turn into homocidal maniacs without them.

Yup.

[Jesterzzn]

Ultima Online is the perfect example of what a non-alignment based RPG will get you. Lots and Lots of sociopaths. If I play Rifts, alignments are strictly enforced, and playing out of alignment comes with a harsh XP penalty at the end of the night.

[Qev]

Alignments are a useful framework for defining the core behavior of a character, though personally I don't like Palladium's alignment system all that much.

Better would be a system where you choose one or two 'core attributes' of the character's personality, and then a set of secondary (ie. less influential) characteristics. It would allow for a much greater variety and probably be a little more realistic.

Of course... when you're dealing with a game world that has 'supernatural evil', I'm not quite sure how that works (unless you've got a core type of 'Evil' or something...).

[TechnoGothic]

i like alignments myself...
i can play without them though. My group likes : Scrupilous, and Unprincipled the most...

They like Charles Bronson styled characters who are "good guys", but not do-gooders...
They like Han Solo styled characters who are out for themselves, but end up doing good with no gains, and kick themselves in the butt for being a "nice guy" at heart...

They HATE Principled with a passion...its too restrictive they say...

I like : Principled, Scruplous, Unprincipled, Aberrant...

Of course i like characters like from "Firefly" too.

[Mech-Viper Prime]

Alignments are the best or you get something ultima online(which is a joke nowadays)

[RainOfSteel]

In d20/AD&D, I absolutely junk alignments, because I despise that alignment system.

Palladium alignments are far superior*, and I can live with them easily. I do use them in my games.



*In fact, they're one of the PB system's best features.

[cornholioprime]

Ultima Online is the perfect example of what a non-alignment based RPG will get you. Lots and Lots of sociopaths. If I play Rifts, alignments are strictly enforced, and playing out of alignment comes with a harsh XP penalty at the end of the night.

*****Cornholioprime's "scrupulous" Cyber-knight hastily hides the heads of the Royal Family behind his back and starts to whistle and look down at his shoes as Jesterzzn approaches with his +5 Stick of Thwacking*****

[Guest]

While I do think the alignments are a bit limited, they do go over just about every type of personality. You can be the hero who has no reservations about killing (aberrant) that deals with his own mental issues. You can be (forgive me for saying this) the Goku character, good and justified, but will still kill the enemy if threatened (scrupulous), you can be the money grubbing bum who only cares about himself (anarchist), you can be the maniacally evil man that eats children in front of their parents (diabolic), you can be the the hero who is looking to make a lot of money and mostly cares about himself, though he still knows the difference between good and evil and can feel remorse for his actions (unprincipled).

I think that the alignments cover just about every disposition you can get.

[Blight]

In are games if we have a gm that forces Alignments on us We all chose (to the last man and woman) aberrant. It allows more leeway in roleplay. Alignments limit emotional role play because a good person will do bad things with the right motivation. And it takes from the game when some one yell "your guy wouldn't do that he principled." You just end up yelling back "not right now i'm not, This child raping baby eater is going to die." Alignments limit role play it's that simple. In a mature gaming group they are not needed.

[Uncle Servo]

Okay...

Say it with me... Alignments are just a guideline to how your character acts, not a difinitive set of rules...

A guideline is something that you should follow the majority of the time, not 100%, not 90%, but something more like 80%.

You know, I think I'll say it again...

Say it with me... Alignments are just a guideline to how your character acts, not a difinitive set of rules...

A guideline is something that you should follow the majority of the time, not 100%, not 90%, but something more like 80%.

Alignments indicate how your character normally acts... and 80%-90% of the time is a pretty good indication of how they should be enforced.

If a GM enforces strict interpretation 100% of the time, he/she isn't doing it right IMO. Responding to your wife's/girlfriend's "does this make me look fat" question with "of course not" shouldn't drop your alignment down from Principled to Anarchist even if you think she looks like she's smuggling smoked sausage.

Some people don't have much use for alignments, and if that's how they like to play then it's all good... but I view that as basically playing yourself regardless of the character and that to me would get old pretty quick.

Sometimes it's good to venture out of your normal 'comfort zone' and play someone with a different 'moral compass' than your own -- and when doing that it's handy to have some general guidelines of how to play that character.

[Rimmerdal]

I look at alignments like this:

We're human. that means we react according to situation. We also don't as a standard stay in one mode. We are however prone to reacting in Good selfish or evil as standard. I find it easier to say your Good, Your bad or Selfish...and leave it at that.

Example:
Take Bob the Ex-Slave...Normally he's principled...But when he sees a slaver he goes aberant...Why? He feels that a slaver deserves no mercy at all.

People sometimes don't like or cannot accept others. This can be for many reasons..Fear, anxiety, experience...but lets take someone who uses magic...

Example:
A perfectly normal good aligned mage enters a village that dislikes mages..both the towns people and the mage are good. But the towns people reaction to the mage is not. They capture and interrogate the poor mage and send him on his way out of the village. the people aren't evil..they just reacted from fear.

[Josh Sinsapaugh]

Alignments allow for more ROLE Playing and playing in character, while the lack of them usually leads to straight out ROLL Playing and no definition of character.

[Scooter the Outlaw]

Alignments are good. They seem a little too specialied sometimes, but it gives you a good general review of what to expect from a character. I enjoy having them around as a general guideline.

[grandmaster z0b]

I see the reason for alignments but I use them as a moral compass, not a strict black and white rule.

What I do is ask the players to pick the alignment closest to their character but they can alter a part of it to suit the character they want to role play.

For example one character wanted to play anarchist but said their character would never use torture under any circumstance. As long as they can answer what their character would and wouldn't do under the situations listed in the closest alignment that's fine.

Also if a player is drifting from their alignment I don't mind as long as they can justify the change and role play it properly.

Eg: the Mind Melter in the party started as unprincipled and played it fine, however when he started using mind bond, he started to get paranoid about what the person he had mind bonded knew about him. They were all evil criminals and it was for the greater good, so he wanted to kill them. I explained that most were petty criminals and at this stage he wouldn't just execute them, he agreed and took them to the local jail and asked them to keep the criminals in there for the duration of the mind bond.

He kept using mind bond and started to develop a few minor insanities as a result, and I did alow him to kill one of the truly evil people he had mind bonded with. After the session he approached me and asked if he could move toward a more anarchist alignment as his character is seeing all the evils of the world and is becoming more "pragmatic" in how to deal with it, but also all the mind bonding with evil people is starting to leave an impression on his psyche.

I said that's fine as he explained it well but he would have to role-play it properly and would have to accept any insanities he devolped. I think that's what good roleplaying is about; to see the characters change as a result of their adventures. It is certainly interesting to see this characters change from a naive, idealistic young man straight out of Psycape to a slightly crazy hardened antihero who is still trying to do the right thing.

I made it clear that if he ever became truly evil he would become an NPC.

[grandmaster z0b]

snip...

I said that's fine as he explained it well but he would have to role-play it properly and would have to accept any insanities he devolped. I think that's what good roleplaying is about; to see the characters change as a result of their adventures. It is certainly interesting to see this characters change from a naive, idealistic young man straight out of Psycape to a slightly crazy hardened antihero who is still trying to do the right thing.

I made it clear that if he ever became truly evil he would become an NPC.

That's pretty cool, but I hate when everyone is playing the "hardbitten antihero" character. There should be some people who can still honestly be good characters. I don't think characters who become evil should become NPCs, that's pretty ridiculous. Of course, the player group may be at odds with them, but becoming an NPC? No thanks, that doesn't make any sense.

It's our game, why doesn't it make sense? I have played games of evil players before and they were quite fun, but I made it clear at the outset of this campagin that I wanted the players to be the good guys, at least to some degree.

Also it was interesting seeing him go from idealistic to hardbitten, it wasn't a cliche and the others in the group are still good. I may be taking this the wrong way but I'm finding it hard to see your point. Are you saying that a GM should allow evil characters but hardbitten ones are boring and should be good?

[Thinyser]

I feel alingment is a good idea but is rarely exicuted well.

It should be used as a guideline for how the character will normally act in a given situation....that said there are times that I would kill an "innocent" and not feel that I was "evil" for doing so....

[Jesterzzn]

Ultima Online is the perfect example of what a non-alignment based RPG will get you. Lots and Lots of sociopaths. If I play Rifts, alignments are strictly enforced, and playing out of alignment comes with a harsh XP penalty at the end of the night.

*****Cornholioprime's "scrupulous" Cyber-knight hastily hides the heads of the Royal Family behind his back and starts to whistle and look down at his shoes as Jesterzzn approaches with his +5 Stick of Thwacking*****

Cornholio! Where is your Brother? Why is he not with his flock? Did you think I would not know? GO NOW INTO THE LAND OF NOD!

[Larsen]

I use alignments more as a guide to show me the gm where they character stands. Our group its more or less this is the alignment you've chosen. This is how you should act. If you don't and go off the deep end for no apperant reason(principled character goes into a town and burns it to the ground for no reason) thats where the the handy dandy random insanity table comes in.

Also in the game I listen to the actions of the player characters. Then at the end of the session if one player is not following it I pull him aside and tell him he is not following good,bad, selfish, whatever. If he continues playing this way he won't be listed as good. And in my games your actions follow you. You go into a mix town of humans and d-bees. You slaughter all the humans or all the d-bees. Well bubba-joes brother from the next town over is going to go hunting for you. Or if you save an entire town from vampires then the rumors of your heroics will spread to the surronding towns. The only thing that really gets an xp deduction from me is killing another pc for no (ingame) reason. He called me a jerk irl doesn't count.

[Josh Sinsapaugh]

Another thing about players pick an Evil alignment is that they don't usually play an Evil character.

More ofthen then not they are by right playing Anarchist, Unprincipled or even good...having only picked an Evil alignment because it is "cool."

This was probably mentioned already but it bears mentioning.

[Rimmerdal]

Another thing about players pick an Evil alignment is that they don't usually play an Evil character.

More ofthen then not they are by right playing Anarchist, Unprincipled or even good...having only picked an Evil alignment because it is "cool."

This was probably mentioned already but it bears mentioning.

Indeed it is "cool" because in real life you can't be Aberent and geta way with it. that's the reason mages, Mystic Knights and D-Bee's are often chosen over human characters.

How many people here play D-bees? probably a lot. How many play ordinary non powered Humans? probobly Not alot.

I know I tend to stay with humans, but even I prefer Psychics. Though on day I will play a vagabond. (no powers just a vagabond.)

[Josh Sinsapaugh]

Another thing about players pick an Evil alignment is that they don't usually play an Evil character.

More ofthen then not they are by right playing Anarchist, Unprincipled or even good...having only picked an Evil alignment because it is "cool."

This was probably mentioned already but it bears mentioning.

Indeed it is "cool" because in real life you can't be Aberent and geta way with it. that's the reason mages, Mystic Knights and D-Bee's are often chosen over human characters.

How many people here play D-bees? probably a lot. How many play ordinary non powered Humans? probobly Not alot.

I know I tend to stay with humans, but even I prefer Psychics. Though on day I will play a vagabond. (no powers just a vagabond.)

In a sense, it can be cool, however in those instance many times the player will really being playing their character's as if they were unprincipled, anarchist or even good. Such players should have that pointed out to them...then again they are usually new players.

I know it is not a consensus of all players, but the majority of my players play humans most of the time...but that is hardly a reflection of the game in general.