One of the most important elements in tabletop roleplaying is figuring out the intersection of narrative and design. Too much focus on narrative makes a game nothing more than a rite with foregone conclusions; there may be a place for this, but it is not generally suitable for every audience or at every moment. The tremendous Grey Ranks, for example, always tells a particular story. It does a tremendous job of this, but it would not be the only game I'd play for the rest of my life.

Going strictly for design and ignoring narrative is a great way to run into problems with being over-encumbered by rules or having bland rules that don't actually accomplish what you're going for. This is a common criticism leveled at GURPS (which intimidates me, but I don't think it's as bad as people say when set up as intended), and it's one that I would say plays a critical role in figuring out one of the fundamental issues with D&D that comes up every two years or so: the much maligned alignment system.

A copy of D&D's alignment chart that I whipped up in Inkscape.

The alignment system seems to function on a very basic level as a nine-point distinct identifier for characters' behavior, and it does that marginally well, but it has some difficulties when you get into the complexities of the setting and individual and hits other issues.

In Defense of Alignment

Before I tear into alignment, I want to talk for a moment about where it does well, because I don't believe in just attacking other peoples' work and also because it has some redeeming values.

The first and most potent element in favor of alignment is that it helps streamline things and make people easy to work with. Since I'm borrowing the title from Nietzsche, I figure that I may as well quote and misinterpret him in the time-honored tradition of every modern reference back to his work.

“Every profound spirit needs a mask”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

In this sense the alignment system serves to turn characters into more functional elements within a system. In various editions of D&D, the alignment system has been more and less important in how the actual mechanics play out, but the core elements are more or less the same; characters get an alignment that is in tune with how they generally act.

This means that some magic interacts with players' characters based on their alignment, and player use their alignment to guide their actions.

This is something of a simplification, but since I don't want to go into too much detail about any particular instance of the mechanic I'll just say that it has gone through some interesting steps over the years and that its more recent detachment from most of the game in fifth edition has its pros and cons, the latter of which being that a lot of narrative space goes unexplored by the lowered emphasis on alignment, but the general flexibility is probably for the best.

Alignment's Limited Resolution

The problem, fundamentally, with alignment is that it creates struggles with definitions.

The most obvious factor here comes from the definition of lawful and chaotic. Not only do players tend to misunderstand this, viewing lawful alignment as petty rules-following and chaotic alignment as an excuse to use "creative" moral solutions, the definition in particular of law and chaos will vary from one culture to another.

With adventurers and other protagonists, you already have people undergoing a heroic journey, which is fundamentally the entrance of the known into the unknown. As a result, "lawful" acts may become difficult while "chaotic" ones may become even more difficult, as the hero represents the combination of the two worlds into something useful.

A neutral alignment doesn't help anything; it's essentially a null choice in a binary selection. Since it doesn't give any feedback to help guide a character's role in the story (is the neutrality a result of apathy or careful balance?), my experience with neutrality is that it encourages players who choose it as an alignment for their characters to stand back and do nothing when an issue arises.

The good-evil dichotomy is more problematic, but for simpler reasons. If evil represents wanton harm (which is both close to the traditional D&D definition and a good point for working with evil philosophically without getting hung up on specific details), good obviously represents nurturing and uplifting others.

However, the heroic journey is not necessarily about good and evil. Those who stray axiomatically toward one or the other are likely to be encumbered by these choices, and reject the possibility of the unknown in favor of the known. One could argue that chaotic characters defined simultaneously along the evil or good dynamic are unlikely to fall into this trap, but my experiences have, again, come up differently with the combination simply serving to dilute the definition: lawful means always following the good or evil element in a character's alignment, chaotic means almost never doing so.

In this case it is actually helpful to have the neutral element, but at that point the grid becomes pointless.

Then one runs into the constant struggles between definitions of law. A lawful good character may, in one setting and culture, follow full legal process and restrain from killing an evil captive. In another, they may execute an evildoer to bring judgment in accordance with the law, without having any personal stake in the matter.

This is perhaps the most dramatic possible example, but it is one which shows how the alignment system fails to bring meaningful definitions to play.

Alignment and Cosmic Struggle

Most roleplaying games aren't just about ordinary people, but about heroes who set the tone for their universe and rub elbows with the most powerful elements in their reality.

The problem here is that heroes will not typically align perfectly with any of these axiomatic ideals.

If you look at many fantasy settings, there are icons that serve as manifestations of a concept; a deity in the traditional mythical sense.

These deities and their agents represent, often, a particular element of the alignment chart. They may have angels, demons, or other extraordinary creatures that they can call to arms and use to manipulate the world.

In comparison to these beings, the alignment chart fails to provide heroes with a meaningful equivalency.

In the fifth edition of D&D, for instance, many of the old systems for alignment were moved away from player characters to only impact these sorts of deific entities. At that point, however, it becomes moot to ask what an individual's alignment is, because doing so only creates confusion between the mortal player character, with their more nuanced and fallible approach, and avatars of the axioms.

Of course, many characters have an alignment to indicate their adherence to a particular society or deity within the universe of the narrative, but this would by itself be sufficient–and a better descriptor–for the purposes of storytelling.

Alternatives to Alignment

One of the best alternatives to the alignment system as we see it is the Humanity system in White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade (there's also a newer version, but I'm not familiar with it).

This works like a sliding scale, with characters who have a high Humanity being more "human" (e.g. not controlled by their vampiric instincts), and low Humanity leading to a mixture of madness and bestial behavior.

Note that I'm not considering simply having a corruption or insanity mechanic, like in something like Dark Heresy or Call of Cthulhu. Heck, I'm even discounting corruption in Symbaroum, which is marginally closer to what I'm looking for.

However, the game Degenesis (NSFW; non-sexualized nudity) has a good thing going with its faction system, which encourages players to adhere to a particular code of conduct. Legend of the Five Rings also touches on this

One of the most interesting alternatives actually has come in the form of video games; both the recent Shadowrun CRPGs and Divinity: Original Sin feature "tags" that characters pick up, and use these to define characters. These don't necessarily constrain a course of action, but it would be totally feasible to give characters tags that are similar.

Our Plans

Since I've weighed in, I want to talk about what I'm feeling for the games we're working on going forward.

Genship Exiles is going to feature a system for using tags to define characters, though I'm not 100% sure what this looks like. I think that the defined affinities system, where characters take their connections and then describe why they're drawn to them, will be the main way this works.

It won't be perfect, but it's designed to be fast and fluid and build relationships.

However, Hammercalled is going to get a more direct version of this with the work I'm doing on Othenar/Unsung Gods, which I should be getting back into after I finish Genship Exiles/Hwaet.

The idea behind this is that it allows us to build powerful faction-locked abilities, but also create effects that are tied to alignments.

The idea being that a character chooses a guiding principle; this can be an abstract metaphysical one (e.g. the Fall tracker, which measures a character's level of moral compromise), a social one (e.g. Chivalry), or a religious one (e.g. devotion to the Church of the Unsung God).

Characters can get more than one, but this creates a conflict in their concept. Naturally, any positive aspect struggles against Fall, but it can also mean that two concepts may oppose each other (e.g. Chivalry rivaling a character's devotion to Iovan, the God of Coin and Masks).

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