The Alignment Game Introduction

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Second Edition was a BIG part of my childhood. From grade school to high school it was the RPG of choice period. Some weirdos, like me, dabbled in GURPS and West End’s Star Wars but all the hard core, Salt of the Earth, gamers played AD&D or Shadowrun and that was that.

You know. . .come to think of it, I’m playing in two 3rd Ed. games and a Pathfinder Game and nothing else right now so I suppose things haven’t changed.

Huh.

Going to have to shake things up with Knights of the Hidden Sun.

Anyways. . . I’m dedicating a series of posts to this game I have loved and do love so much. I call these posts the Alignment Game.

All incarnations of D&D I’m familiar with make use of Alignments. The purpose of an Alignment is to tell the Good Guys from the Bad Guys. This is important in a game about Epic Fantasy. After all you need to know who is worthy to wield the holy sword and who will be the go-to guy of the Dark Lord Amuck. Alignments are also a handy tool for crafting pre-made adventures. It’s nice know before hand that the PCs will want to save the orphanage rather than burn it down for shits and giggles.

An Alignment places a character on a point between Law and Chaos and Good and Evil.

Lawful Characters: Respect order and follow the rules. They stand against Chaos.

Chaotic Characters: Respect change and freedom. They stand against Order.

Good Characters: Hold others as more important than themselves. They stand against Evil.

Evil Characters: Are supremely selfish. They stand against Good.

Neutral Characters: Balance these extremes.

Every D&D character has two of the above elements which means the possible Alignments are: Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Evil. This Alignment dictates how a character acts and how certain magics affect them. There are some spells that protect exclusively against evil characters. There are some weapons that do good characters harm. There are some places that inflict pain to chaotic types, there are others that will drive a lawful person insane.

The beautiful problem about this is there are may differing views on how alignments should work. Some say a Lawful Good character can’t jay-walk to save a damsel form getting run over by a maniticore. Others say that a True Neutral type will not pick his nose for fear of disturbing the cosmic balance. Others say a Chaotic Evil character must eat a puppy a day to be true to himself. The risk of course is if a character falls out of his Alignment his player will be teased by his friends for not being a good roleplayer and/or have his character lose a level or two due to ‘moral dilemma’.

These are serious problems but don’t worry, in this series of posts I will enlighten you with pure examples of characters from every type of Alignment. Read this and become wise. It goes without saying that my word outweighs that of even the creators of the D&D realm (Ed. Greenwood you’re not reading this are you?) for. . .

I AM CHALL!!!

 

 

Note: I am not being 100% serious for this series of posts so please don’t flame me bro.