While I never feel like I’m quite ready to throw out alignment, the classic law-neutrality-chaos access of Dungeons & Dragons and the nine-pronged matrix of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons never really did it for me. They were good at this: getting someone to make a general decision about the outlook of the character, and giving a heads up to the DM. You knew the potential for trouble was coming when someone picked chaotic, chaotic neutral, or any of the evil alignments; especially in your teenage years. At one point, some RPGA campaigns not only banned evil alignments, they banned the chaotic neutral alignment as being too disruptive for play. I found that absurd. Alignments aren’t too disruptive for play; it’s a freaking game mechanic, and not even that mechanical of one. People disrupt play. There are players out there that love to find holes in the system. And any hole will do. When either someone or a group of someones do this in an obnoxious way, there is a tendency to want to limit their options with prohibitions. I’m not a big fan of banning rules items in an RPG. I don’t want perfectly good tools and options to be thrown out because someone wants to get their entertainment through that form of metagaming. This is where we get the idea that alignment is the excuse for dickish behavior. To be honest the dickish need no excuse for their behavior. They do it because they get a kick out of being a dick. Like I said before, alignment is just an easy handhold.
So why is it so easy? Alignment is just too broad and categorical. If you say that you are chaotic good, does that mean that you are good-hearted but flighty? Does it mean that freedom promotes the common good? Do you believe that authority stunts the potential of happiness? Yes, yes, and yes; at least according to D&D. These are vastly different philosophies and motivations, at least in my view. Often, this broad tool that is supposed to help me, the DM, figure out how a person I don’t know, or don’t know well, is going to play their character has me grasping at straws.
- If you think determining Batman’s alignment is terrible, try figuring out the alignment for the characters in True Blood. Vampire Bill (left) does some terrible things due to his beliefs, nature, and the reality of the vampire’s power structure within the course of the show. In the course of the story, though you relate with him. This has always been the chief conflict of alignment, the struggle between belief and action (or as The Burning Wheel puts it–instinct.
So lately I’ve been watching True Blood on HBO. If you haven’t heard of it, or deigned to watch it, here’s the summary: it’s Twilight for adults. That’s not a bad thing either. Imagine the potential of Twilight without all the stuff that make you groan and vommit (The most melodramatic angst I’ve seen since Heathcliff bashed his head on a stump. Male grunts while shirtless. Sparkly vamps? Really? I’m fully aware of reason’s for Twilight’s appeal). And when I say it’s adult, I mean adult in every sense of the word. It’s full of sex, fetishes (and I mean fetishes both sense of that word), and violence, usually mixed together in a disturbing stew. If you’re puritanical, you’ll probably not enjoy the show. Anyhow, the show is really at its best when dealing with the relationships between people, the conflict of ideals, and power. The more I watch, the more I realize I’m watching a good fantasy alignment system at play. Not only do the characters in the show hold beliefs, those beliefs are constantly tested, attacked, and affirmed though the story. Just like a combat system is there to give you a baseline for creating good cinematic fights, I think a good alignment system can create the framework for the conflict of ideals in your story. You just have to find the right tool for the job.
I believe the brilliance of The Burning Wheel Fantasy Roleplaying System isn’t the combat mechanics (though I’m a fan of dice pool RPG mechanics in general, I’m typically left cold by their application in most games). The real brilliance is its “alignment” system. Rather than categories of general beliefs that only an armchair philosopher would get excited about, the system gets its players (and gamemasters) to think of real and tangible beliefs, instincts, and traits.
Here is the rundown. Beliefs are the broadest of alignments. They tie the character to a world bigger than themselves. “I serve the Compulsor of Eilthir”, “No demon should gain a foothold in the Vold Empire,” are both fine beliefs. Beliefs can be changed by the character, but at the timing of the gamemaster. They require player to some have some knowledge of the game world, and thus require the gamemaster to find a way to give it to them.
Instincts are if/then statements that define your character’s actions and often create avenues for dramatic internal struggles. “I never trust the enemies of Eilthir”, or “I always attack demons” are both perfectly good instincts. There is a part of instincts that I’m not enamored with, and that’s the part that talks to combat rules in too open of a manner. For instance:
“Instincts allow players to set conditions for the characters that might otherwise break the rules. Do you have a “draw sword” Instinct? Well then, your character’s sword is drawn at the start of the combat without having to spend actions. Instincts allow you to bypass a test, but they can assume you made the test at some point.”
- The Burning Wheel Fantasy Roleplaying System Revised Edition, page 58
- On the off-chance that you have not, check out The Burning Wheel RPG. It takes chances in intriguing ways. While the system as a whole can be flawed in its fiddle, almost all of the concepts are illuminating. If you are looking for a fun and simply playable version of the system, try the Mouse Guard RPG. Don’t let those cutesy mice fool you, it’s a story and a game with teeth. And you can always not pretend you’re mice and play it.
Maybe I’m getting cynical in my old age, but this opens things up a little too much. It’s not that the example’s terrible, it’s the potential list of if/then statements that some players (you know, the ones that love holes) will gleefully exploit. It’s worse than almost any other rule I’ve ever read in this result. I’m too old to constantly fight those battles…and I’m not that old. I think instincts work best if you view them as well-intentioned faults. Advantage/Disadvantage systems were once one of those Holy Grails of RPG design. From being blind, to having one arm, to being claustrophobic (a ridiculous trait for any dungeon delver), to being “insane,” most systems try to talk to the resolution and combat system to closely to do their job correctly. Most players, looking for more character options would choose the one that would give them the most weal for the least woe. The background systems in 4e (both of them…and the one we will see in the future) have this issue in spades, especially the Forgotten Realms backgrounds. I’m a strong believer that background and alignment play has its own game space—a place where the rules are different, more fluid, have more to do with storytelling than system integrity and a mechanical representations of Csikszentmihalyi’s flow channel. But I digress.
Lastly, you have traits. These are general words that describe your character’s personality. Flight, insecure, brave, reckless, and good, are all traits. In many ways, traits are the weakest of the three, but they can be very useful for players to let the gamemaster the general tone of the character.
In many ways, this system—at least the beliefs and instincts—part of the system do what alignment desperately tries to do. They give the players tools to shape their character’s beliefs in the world and to play a game that is more dramatic, and often more emotional. And that’s its brilliance. It offers simple and elegant tools to do what alignment tries to do, only better. I also feel it could properly capture the tone of the story and belief struggles of True Blood…which I found exciting. Good vampire stories are always great. Vampires are like story +1. And there has been some great give and take over the last few decades with vampire stories. True Blood owes a lot to concepts created and championed by Vampire: The Masquerade (that owes a lot to Interview with a Vampire, and ad nauseam). But the ideas in True Blood always strike me as having a desirable range.
I’ll also admit it isn’t for everyone.
If you’re playing a hack-n-slash dungeon crawl on a Friday night to unwind from the stress and annoyances of your job, I think you’re better off just throwing alignment out, or just keeping the good-neutral-evil axis. Contrary to the belief of internet pendants there is nothing wrong with playing D&D like a tabletop version of Diablo. Games make fun. Fun is relative to the audience. The best games either allow for greatest number of people or provide tools to tailor the experience to their particular audience. But that’s a topic for another time.
This Friday, let’s look at taking some of the assumptions of the burning wheel system and applying them to D&D. What do we keep? What do we throw away? What do we add?