Alignment (roleplay)

See also: Alignment

In certain roleplays, the alignment is a way of defining and of classifying the morality of a character, of a creature in terms of rules. Alignment appears for the first time in Donjons and dragons , the very first roleplay, but much of roleplays published since do not employ the concept of alignment.

Alignment appears also in certain wargames, board games and video games.

d20 Modern

The play D20 Modern , inspired of Keeps and dragons , employs the allegiance , an ordered list of groups and ideals whose character feels near. When the character has a decision to take, this list helps the player to choose, generally while following what is most in the list.

Keeps and dragons

See also: Alignment (Keeps and dragons)

The behavior moral and ideal of Keeps and dragons are composed of nine alignments out of two axes: Well/Badly and Law/Chaos with a component of neutrality for both.

High-school girls

The Roleplay amateur Lycéennes employs a system of alignment directly inspired by that of Donjons & dragons , with nine alignments distributed on a table.

Le Monde of darkness

In the plays of the World of darkness of the editor White Wolf, the characters have two characteristics, the natural and the attitude, which define the personality and the objectives of the character.

Moreover, in the play Vampire: the Masquerade , there exists a named characteristic humanity , noted from 1 to 10. A high humanity indicates a character empathic and altruistic, whereas a low humanity indicates an egoistic and bestial character. Certain characters (as the vampires of the Sabbath) have a morality defined by other criteria that humanity. Certain editions of other plays of the World of darkness took up this idea, by including a characteristic measuring the morality of a character from 1 to 10, but it is not always called humanity.

System Palladium

There exist seven alignments divided into three very marked types:
  • Good (good) :
    • Man of principles (principled) : the nice usual one which avoids violence and preaches justice;
    • Scrupulous (scrupulous) : nice violent one who is ready to kill or make violences or enfreindre the law for “the good cause”, but only when that is essential.
  • Egoistic (selfish) : all that the man does apart from a cause is for its personal benefit.
    • Opportunist ( unprincipled , literally man without principle, scruple): it tends to be rather nice, it turns the events to its advantage but would refuse to make the evil even if that pays to him.
    • Anarchistic (anarchist) : it is ready to do anything who pays to him.
    Bad
  • ( evil ):
    • Miserable ( miscreant , it is a Faux friend): malicious traditional which makes the evil to gain something there.
    • Diabolic (diabolic) : it makes the evil for the pleasure.
    • Aberrant (aberrant) : it makes the evil but with a direction of the rather thorough honor.

The concept of alignment is rather different from that of Donjons and Dragons (D&D) . In D&D , alignment determines also the philosophy of the life and the general behavior of the character, but it is especially one will have which the character releases and who can be perceived by magic beings and objects. Here, it is just about an general orientation of the behavior of the character; it is not related to fantastic and is also defined in the plays of the type Science-fiction. There are only seven alignments (against nine in D&D ), the absolute Neutral does not exist.

Warhammer

The first edition of the roleplay Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay employs a system of alignment. Five different alignments exist, and are distributed on only one axis: honest, good, neutral, bad, and chaotic. The chaos in Warhammer being a powerful destroying force, chaos is regarded there as “worse” than the evil. This system was abandoned in the second edition of the play.

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