I'm considering a replacement for the alignment chart. Here's what I've got thus far...

Example: Lawful Neutral Fighter, tells me very little about a character, and is not especially useful for helping differentiate dozens of NPCs, several of which might be lawful neutral fighters.

Proactive Principled Responsible Analytical Fighter, on the other hand, tells me a good deal.

The concept of putting player morality in the rules actively limits creativy and discourages character development.

Say I make a fighter, with an alignment system he becomes a Lawful Good fighter, but this is not an expression of my own idea of his morality but one imposed by the requirements of the system. Now my actions are constantly shadowed by ''is this lawful good?" instead of "is this what my character would do?". He must fit in one of 9 boxes.

And instead of gradual development over time, such as gradually bending his code to get things done quicker, there must be a point in time where he switches from one box to the other.

Your suggestion is not much better, as it creates false exclusivity and forces people into broad archtypes when this is not the case, for example an Architect must be both analytical and creative. The same proplem with the grid persits in terms of character development. In your system, say my fighter was principled, but used to be a slave, so when he encounters slavers or the like he acts spontaneously. This comes from his principles, but in your system he must abandon his previous character descriptor to act this way.

Alignment should not be a rule, dont bother replacing it and scrap it completly. Your players should be able to describe and define their characters with their own words.

The closest thing I can think of familiar to an alignment system that isn't complete shit is Motivation-based Complications from MnM3e. Pretty sure there's other stuff like it but you get my point. It serves as the character's guidelines, and said character gets rewarded for being within those guidelines even when it penalizes them, hence the namesake complications. It's something that serves the purpose of adding fun to the game.

Alignments systems do the opposite of adding fun. Not only impose shitty limitations in game but also cause cancerous discussions on a consistent basis.It's the same when shitty systems like Pathfinder add a bunch of nitpick math to better simulate "realism" in a what is mostly a high fantasy game.

If a mechanic doesn't serve its purpose towards the game's fun factor, throw it in the trash.

>An Architect must be both analytical and creative.
Yeah, that's an issue of poor labeling on my part. I was trying to label "plans things out vs improvises solutions to their problems" with a label. Each example is meant to be a single axis consinuum of personality traits.

Each option would (when complete) have a sentence to clarify exactly what the axis is about and what the two terms mean.

>In your system, say my fighter was principled, but used to be a slave, so when he encounters slavers or the like he acts spontaneously. This comes from his principles, but in your system he must abandon his previous character descriptor to act this way.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around this.

You mean your character has principles he lives by, except when slavers are near him, in which case he abandons his normal personality and instead acts on impulse and emotion?

I don't see a reason that should not be doable. I can understand how traumatic experiences can cause people to act differently than they normally would. What's the difficulty there?

>If a mechanic doesn't serve its purpose towards the game's fun factor, throw it in the trash.
Hence the thread, scrapping the alignment chart, and instead looking at a variety of individual axes to serve as a quick reminder as to a character's general personality.

There's no reason I can see why you can't have a short concise way to generally describe a character's personality, as well as something else more based on their motivations, or personal connections to others, or what have you.

>Not only impose shitty limitations in game
What limitation is imposed by actually defining your characters personality, that your character's personality is not likely pull a 180° turn from one session to the next without any explanation or cause?

>OP has an idea he's looking to get some suggestions to work on. Asks for constructive help to improve his idea.
>Instead he's mocked for attempting something different, and told he should just use the thing he found insufficient, that he should rely exclusively on paragraphs of text describing a character's personality, that you shouldn't note down anything about a character's personality, only their motivations, or that he should not use anything at all and instead just try to memorize everything instead.
Veeky Forums gets shit done indeed.

>There's no reason I can see why you can't have a short concise way to generally describe a character's personality, as well as something else more based on their motivations, or personal connections to others, or what have you

Except it doesn't do that job all too well at all. How many threads do we have discussing the difference between a Neutral and a Chaotic alignment? How many times has Chaotic Neutral been associated with randumb characters?

>What limitation is imposed by actually defining your characters personality, that your character's personality is not likely pull a 180° turn from one session to the next without any explanation or cause?

Alignments do not do anything to "define your character's personality". Hell, even 5e has four different boxes that do that 10 times better than some fucking chart (Bonds, Ideals, etc.)

What I mean by restrictions is stuff like "All Barbarians have to be Chaotic" or all monks have to be Lawful Neutral from 3.5. Although the mechanical restrictions are gone from 5e, many people are still set on dumbing down what a character is or should be by their class thanks to the castration of creativity that is the Alignment chart.

Pendragon
what you just described is Pendragon

Its more about how putting alignment into rules is pointless and the players should provide theryre own.

The FATE system has a good way of defining characters by letting players write their own descriptors, instead of choosing from an arbitrary list.

>He must fit in one of 9 boxes.
No he mustn't.

>Except it [D&D Alignment, presumably] doesn't do that job all too well at all.
Again, hence the reason for this thread, and trying come up with something that better sums up a character's personality, quickly and concisely.

>Ignoring the concept in the OP and assuming I'm pushing for D&D alignment, the very thing I'm looking to ditch and replace with something actually useful, the reason for this thread, and the concept I called
"Insufficient", in that it "Doesn't tell me enough about the character beyond pushing a handful of stereotypes." ()

Oh? Tell me more about this aspect of Pendragon. All I know about it is it's basically RuneQuest with a simultaneous combat turns and using a d20 for the percentile instead of actual percentile dice.

>write in your own descriptors is the way to go
How do you make sure the descriptors are actually useful and meaningful and cover enough of the character's personality to give you a good idea of how they behave?

>Oh? Tell me more about this aspect of Pendragon
characters have a list of oppossed traits, the total of these two traits is always 20, when rolling to do something you have to roll under the relevant trait.

For example you might have courage-12/cowardice-8 if you were faced with a fearsome beast and wanted to stand your ground you'd have to roll under 12 on a d20, if you wanted to flee then you need to roll under 8

>You have to roll against your personality in order to be allowed to attempt any action.
How odd.
Still, the list might be of use to me for a list of opposing personality traits. Thanks. I'll look it up!

I think alignments overall are very limiting as to what players can RP as. I tend to not take it too much to heart, with some boundaries. This seems like it'd limit PCs even more.
I do, however, think this is really good categorizing for NPCs. I would be able to play them out with restrictions, making them a little more set in stone as to what they would do. Usually, I just throw down 2-3 words describing NPCs in my notes.
I think affectionate vs aggressive could be categorized the same under dom vs sub. If you haven't put something like that in footnotes already.

Hey OP, have you tried ___ playing D&D?

Your main 'aspect' as they're called is an overall character concept, lets say "Tough Mercenary" for a simple example.

The other descriptors come from events in you backstory with a major effect on who you are.

For instance if my character was betrayed a number of times he could have "always watches his back" or "Finds trusting people hard" or even "Thinks the world's out to get him". From one story element you have a lot of room for creativity, while describing your character and giving a reason why he's that way.

This gives the GM a lot to work with, such as this character always being cautious around people.

Meant to link back to

I did not remember that section of the 4e PHP.

I want it primarily for NPCs. I'd have the PCs note these things down so I had some idea the character they intended to play, but for the most part, so long as their character's personality is reasonably consistent from one session to the next, that's what matters in play.

I can see the argument for M&M3e style situations where you bribe the PC with a hero point or whatever to stick to their character's personality when it's obviously not in their own best interests.

Interesting stuff. And I can read about how they implemented all of this in the pendragon core book?

Are there any examples?