The Good, the Bad, and the Neutral

Talking about alignment.

Now just add a modron and slaad to bring it full circle

Alignment has always been something that has fascinated me ever since I started playing Dungeons and Dragons. The axis of Good and evil and neutral and chaos have become very much a part of the nature of the game and it's culture that it is one of the most recognizable parts to outsiders.

Who's a neutral boy? WHO'S A NEUTRAL BOY!??????

I don't want to retread ground on this blog too much, but I feel alignment gets brought up enough that it is worth talking about. Before continuing, I do want to point out this isn't a post about "Which characters are the best examples of X alignment?" Those are super subjective and often depends on which interpretation of the character is being looked at.

...And that, right there, is the biggest issue with the alignment system. It is open to interpretation. The other issue with alignment is that someone might not fit into one alignment. Most peoples' moral compass does not fall on a strict scale of "law vs chaos" and "good vs evil," but it does help to codify and make a mechanic out of it in terms of the game.

In older editions of DnD, your alignment mattered more-so than it does in 5E. For example, certain classes, like the Paladin, HAD TO be lawful good or suffered penalties like losing the use of their abilities and/or being unable to gain levels in that class until they returned to the light. Other examples that come to mind include Druids being stuck at true neutral, barbarians having to be any unlawful, and monks being any non-chaotic.

I wish someone told me this back in the early days

Luckily, later editions, 5E especially, removed these restrictions. Woohoo! So now what? What do we do with this alignment? Having started in 2nd ADnD days, alignment mattered to me, and I was not going to let it be tossed aside, dammit! Them paladins must stick with their alignment. SHIFTING ALIGNMENTS HAS SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES! But as I played more and more 5E, I realized something; Mechanically, it holds little to no weight...

......and this is fine. So much so now when a player tells me they don't know what alignment to make their character, I tell them to leave it blank, and that we will figure it out as they play.

In 5E, alignment is meant to be more of guidelines for roleplaying your character. It is to give them a moral guideline to follow while you play them and guide them through their adventures. How will they interact with people? How do they react toward authority? What are they willing to do to complete the task at hand? Do they want to eat babies? Your character's alignment will help you answer those questions.

As a Dungeon Master, I will also treat alignment kind of like the Karma system from video games such as the Fallout series. Good characters will react better to a fellow good character. Birds of feather flock together and all that. The only time I make alignment "matter" is in terms of religious characters; their alignment will have to fall in line with their god. A good god will not leave evil deeds unpunished, and an evil god only wants scum and villains to follow it. Paladins who follow a good god can be any alignment as long as it is good or they are doing good things. And the way they act if they follow a good god will often reflect that anyway.

The only time I would really have alignment have larger repercussions than what I mentioned is in a campaign that takes place in the Outer Planes. It is here that alignment actually matters and here that it forms the basis of reality. In a setting that was once described as "philosophers with clubs," I think a Planescape campaign should have a heavy focus on alignment more so than most other campaigns.

I hope I was able to shed some light on what to do with alignment. If you really want, you can just toss it out and base an "alignment" off of a more karma system, where your players "alignment" isn't a concrete thing, but rather a fluid idea that shifts and changes depending on how your PCs act.

...Okay fine I caved. Here are some of my examples of characters to help you roleplay alignment.

Lawful Good: Pre-Civil War Captain America

Neutral Good: Batman

Chaotic Good: Robin Hood

Lawful Neutral: Judge Dredd

True Neutral: Shrek (only counting the first movie)

Chaotic Neutral: (CAPTAIN) Jack Sparrow

Lawful Evil: Darth Vader

Neutral Evil: Walter White, and Breaking Bad gives a great example of how a character can fall into evil

Chaotic Evil: The Joker

*braces self for influx of angry comments and tweets.*

Until next time.