ST Forge: Are alignments still relevant?

ST Forge is a series to help Storytellers and Game Masters improve their craft and learn new ways to engage their players.

In the time-honored tradition of placing characters into boxes, alignments are one topic that gamers love to fiddle with. We gleefully cast any pop culture reference into these boxes, making whole charts on the alignments of our favorite characters. Captain America holds strong as the Lawful Good, or even taking every Avatar: The Last Airbender character and slotting them into the nine boxes baked into our culture. D&D’s alignment system is so ingrained in gaming culture that many players lead with it when first describing their characters; “I’m playing a Chaotic Good Ranger… who does X, Y, and Z” is a typical line we content creators often hear when someone wishes to enlighten us about their home games. While this system can provide us an easy frame of reference to ground our imagination in the headspace of the character… is it still relevant?

D&D is only one RPG game out there for starters, and most other games have their own quick method of player-to-character grounding. Even as D&D has evolved over the years, character alignment has had less-and-less mechanics attached to it with each iteration—freeing up the players to roleplay their characters as they wish given the story that has unfolded. So in this ST Forge article, we are going to explore how alignment is used and other ways it can still be beneficial—or why you should chuck it out completely.

Even classic fairy tales in modern format like Child of Light showcase good and evil in unique ways.

How Others handle Alignment

Out of all the games that exist, D&D, Pathfinder, and its other clones are the few that use a strict alignment system. But with countless other games out there, it’s no wonder that alignment in D&D is often on the chopping block. Other systems have developed far better ways to handle such things. Star Wars keeps things easy with Light and Darkside. Vampire: The Masquerade has long used humanity, paths of morality, and even Nature and Demeanor across all game lines. Nature is what the character is on the inside, like a teacher or a bully, and demeanor is the mask you present to the world: like a teacher who acts like a bully or a bully who acts like a teacher. Even further, Legend of the Five Rings keeps characters bound to a rigid path of Honor and plays off the moral choice that sometimes collides with western culture and the beliefs of Shorido. 

Morality mechanics aren’t often tied to their home system, and each one brings something different to light, so shop around! It’s okay to mix and match between systems to craft the game everyone wants to play.

Yet the reason for this moral path across all games remains the same: Tying the player into the mindset of their character. To serve as a guide for the player when those critical campaign choices arise and they need to make a judgment call. As a storyteller, you may want to deviate in your campaign and try incorporating elements from other game lines. “Lawful Good” can be far more nuanced than a few D8 rolls on a D&D Beyond character sheet for ideals. I’ve seen storytellers use Vampire’s Path of Honorable Accord as a template for tenants on knightly orders and factions in D&D several times now. With fewer game mechanics tied to alignment, we aren’t bound to pigeonhole every character or NPC at our table into these boxes—and if you are a beginning storyteller, I encourage you to enhance what alignment means in your world. If the end goal of alignment is to provide players with a roleplaying guide, I don’t feel that D&D’s alignment system truly fits the modern way most tables are played. Instead, take look at what other games use when crafting characters and cherry-pick what you enjoy about their character creation or morality systems.

No alignment

Tossing alignment out the window is one of the easiest house rules you can do in D&D. Thanks to how roleplaying has evolved, characters aren’t portrayed in most games as walking stacks of hit points with a single moral guideline; the worlds we play in are often filled with moral grays. Real people do not fit into a single box described by a matrix of nine possibilities, we ebb and flow, often by the situation presented to us at hand. If you are going to run a no-alignment game, it can be helpful to do one thing as a storyteller—give your factions alignments. While individual people are complex entities, armies and companies often are not. Organizations are either abiding by the law, or they aren’t, hopping in and out of various nations with their own agenda. While the people who make up them can be complex and shades of gray, a larger society or culture can be iconically defined.

Imagine, if you will, the nuance you can craft with your stories by forsaking the alignment system on a personal level. By shifting alignments to organizations or factions, you can now have ‘good’ characters in evil factions trying to change the system from within. I understand that this can be done already by using the existing alignment system—but I say chuck that out. When your player no longer has an alignment, they will think deeper about their character and backstory for their roleplaying guide. While you, as a storyteller, can quickly paint gangs, factions, and organizations with the quick brush needed during live play. Try building characters and launching a campaign with no alignment system from the start and you’ll see a difference in how your players approach the table with their characters almost instantly.

The Case for Evil

This is something I really want to shout out to every GM that is still running the classic alignment system. Let your players play evil. Seriously, just do it and stop with one of the most debated topics at any D&D character creation session. Evil characters are always bound to be more interesting. Let the entire group do it if you want and have a field day with more compelling characters generated from a single tagline on a sheet than a mountain of backstories. Just because you allow evil characters doesn’t mean you need to have player vs player at the table either. It’s all about how you, as a GM, set their goals and missions. The Zhentarim is a fine political mercenary faction who just want to get paid, even if they must work right next to the Order of the Gauntlet. Having characters in a party across the full alignment spectrum will only increase character development and roleplay at the table. 

People who are going to abuse evil characters for a negative play experience are the same people who will destroy lawful good or make their true neutral characters needlessly obtuse. Additionally, this is why I think alignment is an outdated system—it gives us handcuffs that need to be broken. They present nine options, but really only five are typically picked. So, storytellers, take a GM tip to heart—let your friends be evil.

What do you think about the Alignment system? Tell me in the comments below!

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Featured Image: Ashlynn the Sovereign by Lin Romanov