Tabletop RPGs have dozens of poorly conceived alignment systems

>tabletop RPGs have dozens of poorly conceived alignment systems

>the one alignment system that makes sense is from a card game
Explain yourself Veeky Forums.

Exprain

>Richard Garfield is a genius
>MtG is thought as a RPG

It's not that it makes sense (it is in fact just as much arbitrary bullshit) it's that it isn't rooted in a philosophically unsustainable dichotomism.

MtG does not have a good alignment system though

Someone who doesn't play wizard poker here.

What exactly is Magic's alignment system? I got the impression it's just color-coded magic schools. Black is necromancy and evil, Red is fire and neutral, etc. How does it actually work?

Card games are fleecing cons

It's sorta alright. Each color has a lot of associations, so it's tough to summerize. White is order, black is selfish, red is reckless, green is growth, and blue is cunning. Except way more than that.

It's not actually good, OP is high.

That literally doesn’t work because players don’t have customizable abilities based on their alignment, it’s a very macro guide to how they feel they will act.

...

Okay I really don't understand this. Why are theoretical concepts of morality and philosophy abstracted into colors?

>Alignment/ morality systems

Numenera's tides are basically MTG's colors ported to an RPG, though.

To guide card design.

Lore wise, that's what that color of Mana does. If you're impulsive and passionate, you're red. If you're ambitious and selfish, you're black. Etc.

The good thing about the colors is that they don't cancel each other out, because you don't necessarily display ALL the traits of a color and can have multiple colors.
You can't have Lawful Chaotic.
You can be White/Red, though.
There's also the fact that none of them are definitively good or evil though yes, black tends to not be good. And they can all be evil shits.

I dig very much.

>If you're ambitious and selfish, you're black.
hmmmmmmm...

>there's a loli stirner

user stop making me want to fug a meme philosopher

>ambitious and selfish, you're black
As someone that doesn't play Magic, this makes perfect sense out of context

Its also important that you can be more than one color, and that being one color doesn't bar you from acting outside of it. It deals with your outlook too, how your character views and interacts with the world.

The main difference there is that there's no Green and Gold+Indigo is White.

this
multicolored cards tend to hve the most interesting designs as a consequence
for example, white+black is the color for the corrupt leaders who lead for their own benefit, hypocritical clergymen and career politicians, and most recently vampire conquistadors

>how your character views and interacts with the world.

Alright, speaking as someone who never played Magic and whose concept of card games comes from playing Yu-Gi-Oh a couple times in middle school, what? "Your character"? Does Magic have PCs like an RPG game?

5e's alignment system makes sense.
It's,

'Your alignment is kinda just how your character feels in moral terms and their personality but to be honest the system is shit and none of this matters so the only things that actually use alignment anymore are the non-PHB books because somebody fucked them up.'

Not really. The backdrop of each match is 'duel between planeswalkers', but there's no real "PCs".

However, the same alignment system applies reasonably consistiently over all the ~25 years of lore to all the characters in it.