this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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I love traditional alignment, buuuuut this is pretty awesome.

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[–] lunarshot 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

this is really awesome, never seen anything like this and love how this relates to the traditional alignment but is it’s own separate thing!

If there was an axis, what would it be here??

[–] maniclucky 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seems like it's good/evil up to down, law/chaos left to right, but working to ditch the baggage of the terms. I like it.

[–] lunarshot 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am favorable to selfish vs selfless for evil vs good

[–] maniclucky 4 points 1 year ago

That's pretty much what my group fell on when we looked at alignment. Maximally pro-social vs maximally self-serving. Moustache twiddling evil isn't really a thing so it makes fleshing out an evil character much easier when their motivation is more than "murder is fun".

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It’s pretty standard thing in systems other than dnd, called “drives” or “motivation”. There are plenty of them, not only nine. And there’s no need for axis, and no need for names like “path or some shit” too.

[–] lunarshot 4 points 1 year ago

Interesting, thanks for sharing. As for an axis, I like aligning things on a spectrum and thinking about how decisions take you down different spectrums.

I understand that’s just a label but understanding the relationship between the motivations is an interesting part of character development to me

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you give some examples? I’m curious.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ok, as I've mostly play Dungeon World and hacks recently...

DW: Unlimited Edition: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pv6kVVJhbJi1vr8hVeWh1NqrDQJKgY1B/view

Homebrew World: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oLQ6QUT9LgOZuzoB_YqUaCjfPGYEOlud/view

Not the best example cause DW tries to mimic D&D to some extent, using words like "Alignment", "Good", "Lawful" etc but I'll leave it here too, just for comparison...Dungeon World: https://dungeon-world.com/downloads/Dungeon_World_Play_Sheets.pdf

As you can see, this kind of alignment has two parts, (kinda) vague name and very specific description, which tells what character should do to gain XP. But sure you'll gain XP for doing something that fits well with "vague" name.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

dnd has what you're talking about? Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's the point to have "Ideals" next to "Alignment"? Are they mechanically different?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

5e has alignment, but there aren't actually any rules that depend on your alignment. I think they threw it in because it's D&D and you're supposed to have it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that's my guess as well. It was definitely a bigger deal in previous editions, so I figure they just didn't want to entirely scrap what was previously a very core mechanic even if it's now very much less important.