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It's your character

You breathe life into them

You define their heart

And you play them according to their alignment

So what's your character's alignment and why do you play that alignment

If you play multiple characters,

What are their alignments and why

I tend to stick with the selfish alignments, unless Aberrant is available. I prefer the flexibility, especially in a world like Rifts Earth.

Every now and again I'll play a principled character, just to screw with people.

Any.
Because I can.

Killer Cyborg wrote:Any.
Because I can.

I've long suspected you were the mastermind behind Least I Could Do.

We tend to ignore alignments in Rifts. The alignment system is too much of a straightjacket.
For example, one of my characters is a mega-hero. Ancient Master/Mutant. Very worldly, just wants to help people in need. His alignment is Principled. He doesn't lie, torture people, and so on. Due to his background (former to-the-death pit fighter, no identity, survive at all cost because he had to fight for his life every day), he won't hesitate to grab a pile of money some freshly defeated drug dealers left on a table, even though it's 'dirty money'. The HU GMG says that no hero of that alignment would do such a thing, and any hero that does should be immediately reset to Miscreant.

Marrowlight wrote:I tend to stick with the selfish alignments, unless Aberrant is available. I prefer the flexibility, especially in a world like Rifts Earth.

Every now and again I'll play a principled character, just to screw with people.

That's awesome!

I love that you intentionally annoy people by being principled and being ultra correct and proper

Instead of backstabbing people you are the morally over appropriate party member

I applaud you sir

You're awesome

Taoist.
I refuse to be locked into a moralistic straitjacket, especially if it could conceivably threaten my chances of survival.

I tend to play either Unprincipled or Aberrant if allowed. In a pinch I can pull off Scrupulous. I also like Taoist, however I haven't met many GMs who will allow that outside N&SS. My current PCs are Unprincipled (Rogue Scholar-mutant) and Scrupulous (Wolfen Quatoria)

I haven't had the opportunity to play in a Rifts game in quite some time. As GM, I run NPCs along the entire spectrum. If I were to play what is most comfortable for me, I'd either go with Principled or Miscreant.

I'm a fan of Scrupulous characters. They're basically good people who act with just a touch of pragmatism.

Selfish characters are often the most fun, being the guy or gal looking out for themselves isn't the worst you can do in Rifts. Being loyal to your friends and telling the rest of the world to eat it is the sort of attitude most people readily identify with. It's almost like playing yourself, but way tougher or more powerful etc.

Evil characters are fun, but it gets old and you find yourself being "good" more often than not regardless...unless you're intentionally being a tool.

Anyway, i like Scrupulous characters because they tend to actually have values they stick to, and they'll fight people who pervert those ideas, generally doing it on any terms they can. When you live up to that alignment properly, you give other people hope. That's rarely the goal of it, but the result is that other folks learn from what you do. Showing others they can tough it out, that they don't have to live in fear or that not everyone different from them is an enemy are things that go a long way.

SmilingJack wrote:

Marrowlight wrote:I tend to stick with the selfish alignments, unless Aberrant is available. I prefer the flexibility, especially in a world like Rifts Earth.

Every now and again I'll play a principled character, just to screw with people.

That's awesome!

I love that you intentionally annoy people by being principled and being ultra correct and proper

Instead of backstabbing people you are the morally over appropriate party member

I applaud you sir

You're awesome

Tyty

Generally Scrupulous, occasionally Aberrant.

My players can call themselves whatever alignment they want to. But their actual alignment is up to me as GM to determine based on their actions and keep track of.

I started playing in the mid 80's and although I was as boring and plain as a slice of white bread I made all my pc's Anarchist with either a punk rock or surfer/skater motif. Even the Scottish Ninja born into a wealthy/semi-noble family knew all the cool skateboard tricks.

Now that I'm older..I've switched it up a bit.
I have an Anarchist hobo (he does whatever it takes to survive).
I have an Unprincipled Ex-special forces scout (no longer a part of the military he finds the rules of the "real world" need bending a little, because he doesn't have the infrastructure of the military to rely on).
I have an Aberrant Ninja who treats people well until someone breaks his "code of honorable conduct" then he does whatever to either force them to comply/apologize or he destroys them.
I have an Unscroupulous Archaeologist. (yes I made it up) He follows rules and laws until such a time as they interfere with his goals. Can't get a permit to excavate a site? Tomb raiding time. Greedy customs agents want to shake you down? What's the harm in a little international smuggling. Thugs, Henchmen, and lowlifes threatening you? It really was a shame they committed suicide..at the end of my fist!

Why do I play these alignments? Because of the unbridled freedom in the Anarchist(selfish alignment). Yes, we may be tasked with stopping the bad guys, but really who (as a mutant animal..all my pc's are mutant animals) has the time to cultivate a relationship with law enforcement or can k.o. everyone. it's much easier to say the bad guys have been kil... err brought to justice. Because you can bet that the bad guys nor their dice are going to show you any mercy. As for the Aberrant and Unscroupulous..I wanted to try my hand at someone who wasn't a stark raving sociopath.

My newest Pc I haven't figured out yet..maybe you guy's could weigh in? http://palladium-megaverse.com/forums/v ... 2&t=139104
(Not attempting to derail, redirect, or hijack the thread. Apologies in advance)

At the moment I play an Unprincipled Vagabond, but my all-time favorite was a Principled CS Technical-Officer (Medic). She was adamant that you do not kill enemies that surrender or torture them.

Now usually the characters I make are Scrupulous (or the NPCs I choose to include for long term interaction), and I encourage people I play with to do the same. Considering a Scrupulous PC will lie, steal, break and enter, and kill their enemies when the situation calls for it, I have a hard time seeing the need for much more.

When I first started, I was always Unprincipled, but I didn't really understand the system then, and thought that Unprincipled characters were innately 'cool' and allowed to do what they want as long as it wasn't outright evil.

The most fun characters I have ever portrayed were an Aberrant Assassin (in Palladium Fantasy) who drove (some of) my fellow players absolutely nuts, and an Aberrant Secondary Vampire.

I generally play as A Scrupulous character because it has the edge needed to kill and fight without being super moral

I also really love aberrant because you can mold your character to their own creed and as long as you live by this you have a wide array to act evil or decimate opponents

I never play principled characters because it reminds me of like dudley do right or the smiling babyface in wrestling who can't swear and always wants to be super nice and help the people

I had a player who did this and even as irritated as I have been by diabolic stupid characters the saccharine sweet principled character makes me want to jump into the next open rift

On the subject of Alignments, how does your group handle them? Do you tell other players what your characters alignment is, or do you mind if they know? Does doing so/not doing so cause a problem?

I remember playing with a new group, and when I wouldn't let other people (other than the GM) see my character sheet they, slowly at first, started freaking out. My character was an Aberrant Assassin, and he was disguesed as a Soldier, so I told everyone I was a Scrupulous Soldier. They became hyper paranoid that I was going to kill them all, ect, and it actually started breaking the game down, by the end of the game, however, I had not done anything to make it seem like I was NOT Scrupulous (or a Soldier). So, if I had of told them what I was, their PCs would probably have acted reasonably/as if I was a Scrupulous Soldier, but since I didn't and they weren't used to that, they reacted unreasonably or at least different.

I don't use Alignments in Rifts, or any Palladium game. The Alignments are to restrictive, and absolutely non realistic IMHO. Instead we borrow Nature and Demenors(Not spelled right i know.) from White Wolfs games.

Principled. The alignment is nowhere near as restrictive as you might think, and they make for more interesting characters to me.

From Principled all the way down to Aberrant.

My personal alignment is pretty close to Aberrant for morality, though I hold myself to Principled.

/Sub

My characters attempt to make the best decisions based on their likes/dislikes, personal history, and the information they have on hand that they think is relevant. I make no attempt to use the published alignments when playing my characters.

If I'm asked to declare an alignment, I'll declare Scrupulous if the party is mostly good, Unprincipled if the party is mostly selfish, and Aberrant if the party is mostly evil, but I won't bother to try to play to those alignments. If you play as a rationalist, your behavior will fit any of those three alignments well enough that nobody will notice that you're not actually attempting to play the alignment written on the character sheet.

If you think about it, it makes sense. If a rationalist is in a group that thinks of itself as good, then the rationalist will avoid noticeable behavior that will alienate his allies. In a selfish group, that constraint is less severe. In an evil group, that constraint is mostly non-existent. The rationalist still reasons the same in all cases, but the knowledge of "acceptable behavior" influences his decisions for as long as he wants to stay on good terms with his allies.

It usually works out pretty nicely, actually. It's always amazed me the amount of bonus EXP my characters would get for "playing one's alignment" even though I was making no effort to do that at all. It was just a side effect of trying to optimize the benefit I received from the rest of the party.

Now as it turns out, I have no stomach for truly evil stuff, so my "Aberrant" characters are probably pretty tame as far as evil goes.

Honestly, I can't tell a difference between Aberrant and Scrupulous. They're capable of exactly the same behavior, near as I can tell. Only the "spin" is different.

--flatline

I addressed the differences between Aberrant and Scrupulous in another thread. I'll look for it.

It depends on the character entirely.

Myself, I consider Scrupulous. Or at least, aiming for Scrupulous, and having dabbled a few times in being Unprincipled (shamefully).

In my teens I tended to vary between Unprincipled and Anarchist. But as I grew, I favoured Scrupulous. I look at Alignments as challenges to play, and in my group we treat them as guidelines.

I often just use heroes/villains as examples for Alignments, get people to read the structure of the alignment, and get them to try and play it.

Then, borrowing from another excellent game (Burning Wheel), I throw challenges at those alignments. Make them something the character has decided to pursue, not "this is my quasi-morality-elemental-affiliation" thing. Which is, I think, what the intent was in the first place. The point being, it makes for good drama when you put a difficult moral decision in front of a Principled character, or make an Aberrant one struggle to keep her moral code.

Torture is arguable, but where do you get *stealing*?

/Sub

I generally just put "Unprincipled" on my sheet and then play the character as running the gamut between all the alignmnets.