How do you unfuck the alignment system?

To derive you alignment from your actions, not the other way around.
And for the love of god, don't attach mechanical strings to it. Only garbage systems do that.

Remove Lawful and Chaotic alignments.
Good, Evil, and Neutral are entirely where your character lies based on the ongoing conflicts between gods and their ties to Positive and Negative energy. What decides Good and Evil is free and arbitrary, because these facts are determined by said gods. If a God tied heavily to positive energy decides that charity makes someone Good, and that murder makes someone Evil, nobody can really argue because this god doles out and holds back Positive Energy based on this criteria. Someone being Good means they mostly display values gods tied to positive energy extol, while Evil means they mostly display values gods tied to negative energy extol. What these values actually are is entirely arbitrary. If the god of feeding orphans is tied to negative energy then feeding orphans becomes an act of evil. Of course, the interractions of many gods is important as well. Feeding Orphans might be NE approved, but Charity is PE approved. How this affects the ultimate Good vs Evil value of Feeding Orphans is largely dependent on how many gods have how direct of a say on it. If there is only one NE god that approves of Feeding Orphans, but three PE gods approve of Charity, Being Nice to Children, and Promoting Community or something, the action might be fairly neutral, if not pulled over to PE anyways, but still a method for appeasing that particular NE god.
A Neutral character either displays a rough mixture of values shared by PE gods and NE gods, displays many features that PE and NE gods both claim, or else does not significantly interact with these values at all.

"Lawful" and "Chaotic" are personal choices. Whether or not a character lives by a strict code, or does whatever they want has no standing on their cosmic alignment. The God of Charity does not care if you follow every city law, or if you break every law you see so long as you promote Charity. This is something that goes into a backstory, not a central point of alignment.

Use it as an excuse to drag the table into debates over morality that take up entire sessions because they're the type that can't avoid taking bait.

They're up to individual interpretation, but they do have grounding in cosmic forces- There's just not really a difference at the end of the day if your magic channeled from other planes looks like spooky green bats or shining golden fire or the like.
That said, the 'organisations' of these energies tend to keep tabs on and disapprove of misuse. The Glorious Celestial Union of Archons (if they find out) is going to be right pissed that you're using the gift of divine fire to immolate people behind on their taxes, even if they are aligned with the lower planes, by nature of the GCUA.

None of this alters what the PEOPLE and RELIGIONS think, though, and they're free to toast debtors if the next guy up the ladder signs off on it.

This.

I can't believe how many people, even on Veeky Forums, have been literally doing it wrong for years.

Your character does not pick an alignment like class or race, if you do evil things you cease being lawful good. It's really not that hard.

What if I find a way to legally tax the fuck out of the local orphanage? Doesn't that mean I cease to be good but I remain lawful? Maybe lawful evil?

It doesn't really erase your past good deeds, but it's also pretty evil. Make it one step towards evil so from lawful good to lawful neutral at least.

pay more attention to the new background system.

it's actually pretty good.

> How do you unfuck the alignment system?
Use the Shin Megami Tensei alignment system.

It's training wheels for newbies and an easy grouping system for certain spell effects, no more than that. After a point, alignment should be little more than a guideline for players and GMs, not hard set rules.

The main problem there is is that players are allowed to choose their own alignments.
All humans should be True Neutral, to be honest. Changing alignment to Good or Evil should take a lot, like becoming an outsider or an avatar (not just a worshipper or an adept - I mean, something like Jesus being an avatar of YHWH) of the god of Good or Evil respectively.
Same with Lawful/Chaotic axis - it should take way more to actually affect your alignment.

Make it clear that alignment is a status or descriptor assigned based on character and actions; rather than an alignment defining the character and actions. Also, remove unnecessary restrictions based on it and leave it for rare instances where such shorthand is necessary. Like 5e.

I've found Ideals and Flaws to be a good system. ex:

Ideals:
strives to protect children, regardless of their behavior
strives to enforce rule of law wherever possible

Flaws:
terrified to a fault of deep water
always considers themselves first, and will never self sacrifice

I don't really like that idea.

Pretty sure the reason players choose their alignment is because they're not fresh children becoming adults. They're adults with backgrounds that exist before being a member of the party. That background shapes their alignment.

The issue isn't fixing the alignment system, it's not letting players be lazy about their backgrounds.

It solves most of the problems. Paladin smiting becomes harder as they struggle to detect evil with the small e, and in general, cosmic alignment system is way more self-consistent than the arbitrary alignment system we've got now that crashes and burns as soon as it stumbles upon morally relativistic issues.

Plus the neutrals get to kill everybody else and get the best ending.

But then you might as well take out the alignment system entirely, and it assumes that all members of a race will always be the exact same alignment, unless they have done something amazingly good or evil - and if I'm understanding it right, even Hitler would be Neutral under your system until he makes a pact with the devil. It tries to ignore the problem rather than solve it, and it is less satisfying than even the imperfect system we already have - we can't consider a generous priest and a backstabbing assassin to both be Neutral, we know it's not how it is.

>But then you might as well take out the alignment system entirely
Not really.
>even Hitler would be Neutral under your system until he makes a pact with the devil
I fail to see the problem. He is certainly justified in someone's eyes and considered a paragon of morality, while in others' he is vilified and considered the worst thing that ever happened.
Saying that something is unequivocally is Evil or Good is saying that it is truly unnatural, something that not only doesn't fit into our arbitrary social standards, but goes against the nature of humanity itself.
Can you truly claim that Hitler was inhuman in both his acts and motives? I'd say he was as human as he could possibly be, because being cruel is in the nature of humanity.
"evil"? Yes. "Evil"? No.

I feel like we really need an alignment CUBE.

Captain America, yeah? He's usually classified as Chaotic or Neutral Good because when it comes down to the Law vs doing what is right, he chooses what is right.

On a Cube he'd be Internal Lawful Good, he is orderly and follows the Laws/order of his own internal morals.

Someone who's External Lawful Good would be a good person, but follow the law.

Chaotic Neutrals, as we know, change depending what the fuck is happening. Internal would depend on what's happening with them, external on what's happening around them.

Internal Lawful Evil has a code of honor. External Lawful Evil lives in a slave owning society and sees nothing wrong with it.

But then Good and Evil would really only be things for angels and demons. That's why the alignment system might as well not exist in that case - you can just change Smite to extra damage against demons, and detect evil to detect demons. Lawful and Chaotic may still exist, but apparently it's on a similar scale, so might as well leave it out.

>strives to enforce rule of law wherever possible

Whose laws?

>three dimensional tabletoping

Speaking of autism...

>But then Good and Evil would really only be things for angels and demons.
And fae, and devils, and undead, and the Old Ones etc.
You seem to be lacking in imagination.
>so might as well leave it out
And what's the point of putting in a system that arbitrarily classifies your actions? Do you even realize how much of a problem is the good vs. evil dichotomy in the real world? And yet your system claims to solve it? It's silly, that's what it is.
If you perform good deeds, but not of your own agency, can you truly claim to be good? What decides whether the deed is good or evil - the intent or the consequences? Why is it that the same deeds are viewed upon differently in different societies - why is rape and murder acceptable in one society and isn't in the other? Hell, let's even take a look at Aquinas' good and evil, where anything done by divine mandate is considered to be unequivocally good - can you truly say that anything is fine as long as you shout "DEUS VULT" beforehand?
No, fuck you. Using a system that isn't self-consistent is retarded. And the alignment system in its modern iteration sure as fuck isn't consistent.

In this case, rule of law in whatever country they're in. If not, default to home country.

Got to thinking about this in soulsborne terms. Heat and cold being one polarity, Light and dark being the other, with rot and blood being a third dimension in the scale.

Heat would represent those that move for the world to change, where cold would stand for they who would preserve what is good about the world's current state.

Light would represent those that walk the path of the nobility before them, where dark represents those that would stray and seek their own truths.

Rot would be closest to neutrality- a perception that the world around one's self has little to do with one's own actions, and that changes created are destined to slip away. Blood is the ideal that one's own change is the only goal worth following, and that any stagnancy or fear of progression must be discarded to evolve.

I know you guys are talking specifically about a replacement for the traditional alignment axis, but on a bigger-picture scale I feel like "Lawful" as a character-motivator only really means anything if it's referring to Law and Order in a very broad, even cosmic sense, and that it takes local or man-made laws into account only insofar as they serve capital-L Law.

Otherwise you get characters who are described as "Lawful", but who never actually get to express their core values (or rather, they express their core values by changing them chameleon-like to fit whatever authority's jurisdiction they're currently in). And that makes for not only a character that's difficult to play, but one that's honestly difficult to understand.

Like, I'd call MLK lawful as fuck, and he *constantly* broke the law, because he felt the laws were themselves broken.

I think of it like a cop. Whatever his opinion on the law is, it's his creed to enforce it, no matter what.

First post best post.

>Moorcock
What is that? The character's name or what OP craves?

Michael Moorcock, a fantasy author and creator of Elric, the guy who originated the edgy weak sorcerer guy who wields a black sword with glowing runes that drinks people's souls to feed the demon trapped inside.
You didn't think anime invented that shit, did you?

A fun exercise for OPs and others: Go to your local book store, walk up to the counter, and tell them you love Dick, Pohl, and Moorcock.

Dicks, pussies, and assholes.

> tell them you love Dick, Pohl, and Moorcock
Dude, anyone who doesn't know K. Dick doesn't fucking deserve your attention. Literally every of his short stories were adapted into award-winning movies, so there is no fucking way you wouldn't be exposed to Dick in modern culture.

>Moorcock
Go on.

Just so we're clear, I wasn't putting them down, just making a penis joke. All three are excellent authors. (Well, Moorcock's a bit uneven, IMO, and his work looks a bit less innovative now that everyone and their brother has ripped him off for forty plus years, but taken in context his work's pretty damn impressive)

Get more specific.

Trade in these broad, muddy terms, for explicit personality traits.

Greedy.
Sadistic.
Law-abiding.
Spontaneous.
Principled.
Disciplined.

Etc.

Make a big fuck off list without ever mentioning good evil law or chaos.

Have players list any that apply, minimum like, 4.

Done.

...

It's sufficiently vague that it's just not helpful, and the people who try to "follow alignment" just make the game worse.

That sticker is the greatest thing ever.

By only using it as a set of guidelines

The most dangerous part is metagaming or reactions to it - oh, your character is Chaotic Neutral? I hate that alignment, so I won't like them. Oh, your character is Evil? Even though my character doesn't know that and nothing had been done to them, I will actively dislike them.

It's why I argue people should judge characters on a summary of the characters. It has the same problems that you get with using TVTropes terms in that it takes away individuality.

Just. Stop. Using it.

Seriously, DnD and DnD clones are basically the ONLY games with this shit - there's a reason. It's a TERRIBLE mechanic that RUINS both games and roleplaying.

Literally just stop thinking about it.

If the game has an alignment system, it's clearly not trying to be morally complex or philosophically deep, it's trying to be simple. Asking too many questions is missing the point, just roll with it.

>b-but how can killing orcs be moral if orcs have the potential to live a moral life
Orcs are evil and it's good to kill them, that's how.

You get rid of it entirely.

Add an additional axis that indicates how far from your actual alignment your character might stray?

>Chaotic people can work in a Lawful system
no thats just the general trend of the last few years to choose acceptance over facts.
people just need a strong dose of reality.

>I'd call MLK lawful as fuck
he thrived on unrest, cared nothing for the laws of God or man despite being an ordained minister and didn't even respect his wife enough to stay true to his marriage vows.
He's chaotic no two ways about it.

>you can't be dogmatic, lawful and good
we get it, you smoke weed.

I'm inclined to go with this guyIf you want to keep the Detect spells and metaphysical tie-ins for the alignment system then just make alignment what side that you fall on in the COSMIC DICK MEASURING CONTEST the gods have without effecting character personality

Or you use Palladium's alignment system which just lays out shit your character will and won't do
Or you don't use alignment at all

The only way to fix the alignment system is to clarify what it means. I believe that it was only ever meant to be a rock-paper-scissors mechanic that enables, say, holy water to do damage to vampires and churches to be proof against demons and undead. Alignment should not ever be used as an excuse or motivation.

>Authoritarian/Destructive
>Revered/Feared

That works.

>Make it clear that alignment is a status or descriptor assigned based on character and actions; rather than an alignment defining the character and actions.
That's exactly how it's been since the start, newfriend.

By playing it right.

Dude, it's is an additional 3D axis shown on a 2D plane, you fucking cocksucking wanking sissy faggot retard. Just fucking reverse it in your mind.

>hurpadurp how does an z axis work

American education system at work lads.

Alignment describes the overall sum of your PAST actions, it's not a straitjacket which narrows your ability to make future actions. If the character's actions are almost entirely lawful neutral up until point x in time, the actions between point x and the later point y may be entirely chaotic good...But if they're insufficient in intensity or scope to change the character's OVERALL sum of alignment, then he'd still be LN afterwards.

Which solves pretty much the whole problem.

Like basically everything else that people get all buttmad about in role-playing games, it doesn't need fixing because there are plenty of alternatives that don't use it, if it's not your thing, and if it is your thing all you need to do is talk to the people you play with to make sure you are all on the same page.

Alignment fuckery is a complete non-issue, as long as you keep metagaming nerds and my immersion nerds separate.

There's no page in a rulebook that will save the day if you have people who want a realistic, improv-acting esque sequence of events, and people who just treat role-playing the same as they treat magic or DOTA, as a bunch of game mechanics you're supposed to squeeze in the right way to win the game sitting at the same table with each other.

Alignment isn't the sum of your actions, it's the REASON FOR YOUR ACTIONS.

It's not a background option choice to get benefit x, that you can ditch any time you want, it's a crude measurement of where your characters core belief fit in the grand scheme of things.

What's fucked about it? Your actions determine your alignment in a pretty commonsense fashion.

user, if you're butthurt that all your characters end up being labeled some variant of evil, it's not because the system is fucked, it's because you are, or at least like to play fucked up characters. Either change or live with it.

Sometimes I wonder if these threads have more to do with RL than the game. If they do, the same advice goes.

You got that shit exactly wrong. Even angels and demons, creatures made of elemental good and evil, can (under extraordinary circumstances) fall or rise and have their alignment changed by virtue of having their morals and intentions, and therefore the nature of their actions, change.
People can change. Most character arcs require the character to change. Confining alignment is not something that should be assumed; and one shouldn't say the alignment itself is responsible for a character not changing their habits.

Broadly I agree with you, but I'd say that Alignment isn't merely actions, it's also motivation or reason for actions.

A Good, Neutral, and Evil person could all jump into a burning building to save someone, for example: the Good person because it's The Right Thing To Do; the Neutral person because they personally know the guy and want to save them; and the Evil person because they hope for a reward of some kind.

axis are:

Idealistic / Cynical
Young / Old

I like the cut of your jib.
Personally I'd still rather do without alignments, especially more complicated ones, but good job!

Perhaps "reason for your actions" was supposed to mean that alignment can be gleaned from the motivations of a character, where I first read it as "alignments ARE the reason behind your actions"
Pic related, Chaotic Good

TV Tropes trope terms can work for it but only if you list enough to basically make it summary and people actually understand those terms, but listing only few or only one is doing it wrong.

Mental disorders are hard to judge. Pyro doesn't seem to understand that he's hurting people...but he is a violent mass-murderer.

That's where Alignment hits an actual wall and starts to break down: insane people who literally don't and are incapable of understanding that what they're doing is wrong.

As far as intentions, he believes he's helping people and bringing them rainbows and lolipops.
As far as consequences, she's never been shown killing an innocent, just the other mercs who would kill him anyways, and a bit of property damage. There's also the question of whether or not she is actually insane or canonically bound by Pyrovision goggles.

What I meant by alignments are the reason for your actions was that the reasons for your actions, your core motivations, determines your alignment, and that's not something that you just ditch at convenience.

It's your ethics, your moral principles (or lack thereof) not just something you look up at a chart that lists all possible actions and whether they're good or bad. Motivations matter.

>it's muh "intent vs. consequences vs. the act itself" philosophical episode on Veeky Forums

So we're really breaking down to the problem being features gated behind alignment restrictions and players abusing the system to employ them, right?
Man am I glad I play 5e where alignment only matters to a handful of legendary magic items.

Look, I think alignments are fucking stupid too, but that's literally what they represent.

>I'm buttmad about gated restrictions in a game that runs on imagination, but uses a freaking level system, in the year of our lord 2017

>that's literally what they represent.
I'm just saying, it's easier to not use something that is broken instead of trying to salvage it.

Like I said
It's not something that needs fixing because there are already so many alternatives, and the "problems" people who DO want to use it have with it almost always stems from fundamentally different views on role-playing.

>I'm portraying a person and that person's core values isn't just about having the coolest weapon.

and

>It's in the game, I'm not breaking the rules, so why shouldn't I change according to what's more beneficial for me, the player?

People who want it to be immersive and acting-driven and people who just want a videogame that uses their friends as the game engine should not play together. They're both free to play the way they enjoy more, more power to them, but if they try to do it together, they'll make the experience less than what it could be for each other, and it's the source of so many problems that people misguidedly try to fix by fixing the symptoms rather than the root cause.

I've seen alignment as two things:

1) a way to understand MOTIVATIONS of a character. You make choices as you wish, as long as you can say, "Yes, my character is helping this man on the side of the road because it's good / I might get paid / They'll like me / I can ditch him behind if the road turns sour"

2) It locks you out of certain behaviors, forcing compromise. LG cannot slaughter innocents for their possessions, and CE cannot turn someone in to the authorities and valiantly turn down the bounty. If they do either, their alignment changes.

That's what the point is, it reflects choices over time. If you make new choices, your alignment changes. You define your alignment, your alignment doesn't define you.

>CE cannot turn someone in and valiantly turn down the bounty
Sure they can, then they hightail it out of there before the explosives they planted on them blow the jail sky high.

The problem is really that alignments stem from a very different time in role-playing games, and have drifted a lot.

It's not useful for the current crop of D&D players to think about how they fit in the cosmology in a moral sense, like when alignments were first introduced, inspired by Moorcock and his ilk, when all they are going to do with it is put it in the same mental box as the paragon system in Mass Effect.

>Whoa, if I was slightly more evil/good I could pick this option which is really good/unlock a part of the game I haven't seen before!

In 5th edition it matters less than it has in a looong time, but it's still there, making players think about their characters morality in a game-option way.

The core issue is really that the kind of players who would get tons of use out of a good alignment system don't really need it, because they are already thinking about their characters personality and morality when it comes to what actions they take in the role-play, while the players who don't care about it will mostly just abuse it/trivialize it or get encouraged to think about their characters ethics in a very simplified, sunday cartoon kind of way.

>on a bigger-picture scale I feel like "Lawful" as a character-motivator only really means anything if it's referring to Law and Order in a very broad, even cosmic sense, and that it takes local or man-made laws into account only insofar as they serve capital-L Law
Just look at inevitables, the literal cosmic law enforcers.

As DM I usually just assign alignment to the characters. It's my world, and the rules of how the metaphysics work, such as how the universe/planes interprets their actions, is up to me. If someone is acting CN, it doesn't matter how much they protest that they really are CG, because they are not CG.

In the game I'm running right now there are no gods (at least not as intelligent and motivated entities), only Law and Chaos as primal forces, and it's resulted in some interesting philosophies being cooked up by the players about the world, culture, and religion.

This, it's an alignment not a description.
Bring back racial alignments.

>elves are chaotic
What did they mean by this

around elves watch yourselves

>cavemen cannot be chaotic
I don't know if I'm more astounded by this statement, or the further realization caveman was a class.

Elves are dangerous fey creatures, whose Courts are a twisted mockery of human Law.

He's citing Nethack, not D&D. But it's a game that does alignment in a more interesting way than modern D&D, and one that adheres more closely to D&D's roots than the watered-down version seen in the modern game .

>pigface
>cute
That's not an elf, that's orc in well done makeup.

>in well done makeup.
you have said enough user.
dont get too curious

So everyone gets a god (if they want in on the system) and are doled out Good or Evil based on their precepts?

>How do you unfuck the alignment system?
Pretend it's not there. Or if you do use it, it doesn't apply to anything other then outsiders/creatures without moral agency.

Yeah, despite being a close to the mechanics emulation of OSR, nethack has place for a lot of emergent gameplay just like in a regular tabletop.
It's shit for story but it's still an intresting play for any unimaginative GM/player looking to improve.
It even does falling and converting correctly without it being bullshit.

...

I generally rule that characters incapable of understanding morality are True Neutral 3 like You wouldn't consider a shark evil because it cannot see where its actions lie on a morality system, or even that a morality system exists.