This is always a controversial subject, and one that I was already contemplating a blog post discussing, when Johnn added the following to last week’s Roleplaying Tips:

RPT reader Brock writes:

I enjoy good role-play and developing my character’s personality. To me, that is still the primary reason I play RPGs.

On the other hand, I understand the perspective of the “ROLL-playing” gamers. I still want a “game” in the role-playing game, with some rules I can comprehend and try to leverage to succeed at tasks. I even enjoy the bit of random chance that the dice rolls add to the role-playing. Nothing like a good critical hit to give you an opportunity for good role-play!

So, I am both a ROLE-playing gamer and a ROLL-playing gamer.

Maybe an article discussing the different types of satisfaction different types of gamers get out of RPGs might make for an interesting tip?

There are two aspects to this question, and I intend this article to tackle both sides of the equation.

Putting The Role into Rollplay

This is the aspect that most GMs think of when they are discussing the subject, as they want to know how to get their roll-players to role-play. The often-unstated implication is that there is something lacking in the gameplay of those who don’t speak in character; this implication is unfairly perjoritive in my opinion. Over the years, I’ve found that players who find it difficult to communicate “in character” and resort to using third-person perspective to describe their character’s actions can be just as immersed in the game as those to whom the first person comes more naturally.

It can even be argued that these third-person “roll-players” are more deeply involved in the game as the “roleplayers” are cosntantly distracted by the need to live in their character’s heads – characters which were often designed and constructed before play began.

Instead of looking apon players whose natural inclination is less demonstrative, the GM should treat them as an asset! A game is at its strongest when you have a combination of both types of player.

Characterise Non-immersive techniques

The real problems arise out of conflict between these gaming styles and the expectations of others. The best method of avoiding such conflicts is to help the “role-player” to develop personalities for his characters that turn this emotional distancing into an aspect of the PC’s personality. The question is always, ‘why does this hesitate to push his personal perspective to the forefront’? Is he extremely cool and analytic? Is he shy? Is he humble? Does he disdain the revelation of weaknesses and personal foibles? Is he insecure? Any of these can work as explanations for a character who subordinates his personality into a greater awareness of the (game) world around them.

That solves the immediate problem of conflicting playing styles; the rest of the task is to harness the strengths of both player types to make the game better for all participants. The balance of this article will concern itself with techniques for achieving this objective.

Colourful interpretations of die rolls

The most obvious technique is for the GM to make colourful interpretations of die rolls. We all do so to some extent anyway, especially when it comes to combat; this simply expands on the use of artistic licence. When doing so, the GM should start by doing so equally for all players and for the NPCs, but the more roleplay-oriented a player is, the more they will pick up on this and provide their own colour, relieving the GM of the burdon. Encourage narrative descriptions of actions; it may slow play down a bit, but everyone will have more fun in the process.

One word of warning: it’s easy to go too far. The GM has to constantly monitor the balance between narrative interpretation and forward progress.

One technique that I’ve used successfully from time to time is to have each player make twenty or thirty die rolls in advance of their being needed. The GM then keeps these lists and works through them from first to last. This gives him a little advance warning of a spectacular success and permits him to adjust the narrative flow accordingly. Players often don’y like the technque because it is subject to abuse by the GM, who can expend the better results on trivialities, leaving only mediocre and poor results for the things that matter; but if you don’t employ the technique consistantly, instead using it just to get yourself into practice or educate the players in what you would like them to contribute in narrative when they make a die roll, it can be tolerated.

In general, I’ll only use this pre-rolling technique on occasions when I know that a particularly strong narrative element will be needed.

Results are not the whole story

In the non-combat arena, a skill check should not be a case of the player announcing his use of the skill and his die roll, and being rewarded by the results; instead, the GM should think about how long it will take for the character to achieve the outcome indicated by the die roll and describe the activities that lead to the outcome.

For a short time, the GM may get complaints that he is usurping the player’s prerogatives, but provided that it is still the player who is making the decisions and putting the words into the character’s mouth, this won’t last. After a few occasions of doing so, the GM can then select the most role-play inclined of his players and give them the time to fill: “It will take 5 minutes to achieve that result – describe what your character is doing to get the answer.”

Some players (the true roll-players) will be more comfortable leaving this to the GM; other players will quickly pick up on the opportunity and take the burdon from the GM’s shoulders. Once they start doing so, the GM can take the next step of permitting the description to take place before the roll, and awarding bonuses to the roll for excellance (and penalties for a poor performance). If a player chooses not to do so, the GM can interpret after the fact as described.

The penalties are important; without them, the GM can be justifiably accused of favouring one player over another. By keeping the risks and rewards balanced, those who are not naturally inclined towards narrative description are not disadvantaged.

Be flexible in the timing

How long does it take for a character to perform an action, or recall some pertinent knowledge? Going straight from action to result is rarely realistic, and neglects an avenue for the GM to manipulate the players in a more-or-less legitimate fashion.

The most realistic approach uses some (often instinctive) combination of the degree of difficulty and the margin of success to determine how long to keep the players hanging. My players are so used to this that they have learned to be able to aproximate the difficulty I’ve applied by how much flavour text I insert. Over time, I’ve gradually reduced the amount of such inconsequential narrative, which gives the players a genuine sense that their characters are getting better – not only can they achieve results that would have been beyond them in the past, but these results seem to come more easily.

By varying the timing, I can use this as a tool to subtly manipulate the players. Important results can be downplayed by making the difficulty appear lower than it really is, or can be played up by extending the procrastination between die roll and result, using the player’s sense of anticipation to make them appreciate the genuine revelations as significant all the more.

This is not as easy or simple as it seems; it takes practice to get it right. But the benefits are worth the effort.

Conversations with Roll-played PCs

Pidgeonholing anything as complex as player behaviour almost always involves oversimplification. Nothing shows this to be true as an in-game conversation between a PC and an NPC. While the most proficient “roleplayers” will immerse themselves in the personality of their character and handle the conversation as though they were their character, and the most severe “roll-players” will describe what and how their character is saying in the third person with no attempt to pretend to be the character that they represent, most players will fall somewhere between the two extremes.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of giving the “roleplayers” more screen time during conversations simply because adopting the persona of the NPC is fun for the referee as well. To avoid this potential problem, I deliberately use a greater level of third-party description of the NPCs conversation when interacting with “roleplayers” at my table than I do with “rollplayers”. This restores a level of equality to the overall treatment of the encounter.

The “roleplayers” absorb the nuance of the NPCs conversational style by listening when I’m speaking in character to the “rollplayers”, when they aren’t distracted by being “in character” themselves, while the “rollplayers” are better able to get into their character’s heads in ways other than speaking “in character” without being given an unfair advantage by being permitted to hold their end of the conversation at arm’s length. Over time, the “roleplayers” moderate their use of first person and the “rollplayers” pick up on the technique of speaking in first person, and eventually everybody finds a happy compromise that they satisfies them.

Handling Rewards

I like to hand out little extra rewards for roleplaying. It has been suggested to me, on occasion, that this is unfair to the players who aren’t especially good at it – the proverbial “rollplayers”, in other words. I employ two mechanisms to ensure that this accusation is unfounded.

The first is to also reward ideas (whether correct or not) based on their entertainment and insight values. These are more likely to come from the roll-players because they are thinking about the plot and the problems at hand and the bigger picture while the roleplayers are busy acting in character.

The second is to ensure that the “rollplayers” achieve their goals more quickly, and hence are rewarded more rapidly. While this is counter-intuitive, it means that the extra rewards for roleplaying are balanced by the extra time that the players take to earn them, maintaining an aproximate equity between the two.

I have sometimes left it to the players themselves to determine which player made the greatest contribution. A simple secret ballot with each player and the GM writing the names of the two or three characters (PC or NPC) they felt most earned a little something extra, add up the total votes and divide the bonus xp pool by the result – then multiply each character’s vote tally by the result to get their bonus.

Construct Characters from Backgrounds: I

A big key to the GMs capacity for interpreting roll-played behaviour as role-played behaviour is to have a solid character construction. Knowing the character’s personality, and how he thinks, and what he cares about, and what his ambitions are, and why he has made the choices in his past that he has, all provide a context for the interpretation of rolls.

Putting Rolls into Roleplay

Once your players have grown accustomed to at least contributing to the narrative, as described above, it’s time to add an additional carrot, a series of incentives for players to continue to improve.

Bonuses for Vernacular

When players describe what their characters are doing in specifics and appopriate vernacular, I allow them a bonus to the chance of success of the resulting skill roll. Roleplayers appreciate this as a reward for their efforts, while “rollplayers” will recognise it as conferring a tactical bonus to success.

Bonuses for Immersion

Similarly, when players indulge in in-character dialogue, I use the natural flow of the conversation in place of a die roll in determining any change of attitudes. This permits more sophisticated relationships to develop than are permitted under most game mechanics.

Rewards for Character-driven Choices

In a way, it can be said that characterisation only really matters when the personality of the character shapes and influances the choices that the character makes, and that these are only distinguishable from choices the character would make if they run counter to the character’s immediate or long-term interests.

That’s a potent thought. It’s also an extremist interpretation, but that does not alter the validity of the conclusion: the ultimate expression of personality is a choice that might otherwise be questionable.

The obvious implication is that good roleplay results in periodic setbacks to the character’s medium- and long-term ambitions, and that characters are punished as a result by the forfeiture of the experience that they would earn for working toward those objectives.

In other words, if you want good roleplay, you need to compensate your players for it by providing bonus rewards, proportional to the degree of sacrifice of advantage that the player commits.

Penalties for the easy road

If you are going to reward good roleplay, then it seems only fair to penalise bad roleplay. The easy road is the pathway to the Dark Side! Making choices not because they are the most appropriate response of the personality being roleplayed but because they are the most expediant path to success is bad roleplay.

Unless, of course, the personality is described as ‘practical’, ‘straight-line thinker’, ‘the ends justify the means’, or something similar…. which leads to the last point to be made in this discussion:

Construct Characters from Backgrounds: II

The preceeding paragraphs make it clear that the most important aspects of defining a character are in the imposition of limits and restrictions – in other words, defining the things that the character will do only reluctantly, and the things that they will not willingly do under any circumstance. These restrictions should emerge from knowing what the character values, and (most especially) what they are willing to risk their life for; what the character believes, in other words. This is a form of applied psychology that has a direct relevance to the roleplaying of the character.

There are many books on characterisation for movies, television, authors, and playwrights, and these can assist in developing a character definition that is of immediate and practical value from the background events of the character’s life; or, if you have a personality attribute in mind, in developing a personal background that fits this persona.

One of the very best and most useful of these that I have encountered is Writer’s Guide to Character Traits by Dr Linda N Edelstein. If you want to consider purchasing a copy, just click on the cover thumbnail above.

Conclusion

Players are not truly roleplayers or rollplayers; we all have a little of both in us, and a campaign can be the stronger for having both – if they are properly harnessed. Hopefully this article will have set the reader on a path to achieving that goal, while improving the ways in which both interact with your campaigns.

No one likes a sore loser

I like games and I enjoy competing. Years ago, after getting riled up during one too many board games, I realized my competitive emotions were ruining the fun for me and others at the game table. I reflected for quite awhile on this as I took a break from board gaming. Suddenly a solution came to mind, and board games have been fun and pain-free again ever since (with just a couple of setbacks over the years). I’ll tell you my solution in a minute.

I have recently realized the solution also needs to apply to my GMing on a couple levels (pun intended!).

First, I am about to end one campaign and start another. The PCs are reaching the climactic conclusion of a 14 month long, 29 session-and-counting D&D 4E game. I cannot wait to start the new campaign, and that is making me impatient to get the old campaign done with. You know – something new and shiny is always more exciting. Plus, I am keen to try out the Pathfinder rules.

The problem is I am sacrificing game quality with my impatience. I joked a few sessions ago we should roll a d20. If the result is 10 or higher, the PCs win the campaign.

I want to finish the current campaign well, though, and my board game solution will work here.

Second, while I am GMing I constantly live a few minutes in the future. What’s the next encounter? What do the PCs’ current actions mean to my session plans? How will NPCs in the region react to the current encounter? What are my upcoming hooks?

These are important thoughts, but they have their proper time and place. And that is not during the current encounter! I get to the end of sessions and wonder where all the time went. I failed to stop and celebrate the moments.

Constant thinking three moves in advance creates a lot of needless stress too. Because I’m never 100% engaged in what’s happening now, as part of my brain is always angling to arrange the future, I’m often slightly distracted, which comes at a cost of added stress.

The solution: create the perfect turn

I realized a decade ago my board game problems stemmed from too much investment in the outcome. If I lost I took that personally. Therefore, if I was losing I would take that personally as well.

This caused me a lot of frustration during down cycles during games, to be grouchy, and to be a sore loser. Not fun!

Once I noticed my emotions hinged on victory status, I sought to redirect my competitive energies:

1. I figured out that a key to victory is to make no mistakes.
2. I have no control over luck (except in risk management). Therefore, I cannot get upset over what I cannot control, including the roll of the dice.
3. Other players are often better than me, and I definitely cannot control them. So I should let respect replace anger if they play well.

Putting this all together, I created a new gaming philosophy for myself: the perfect turn. Each turn I would play to the best of my ability and focus on optimizing everything under my control. What I could not control I would enjoy, because there is no longer shame or regret or self-judgement when you are doing your best.

I entered every new turn fresh, like I was just starting a new game. Previous turns just gave me a start that was in media res. A trick of the mind, perhaps, but not untrue. So I could not be upset over what had happened previously; it was all just feeding the starting conditions each turn.

Future turns were completely out of my control. I could try to set myself up for positive future situations and positioning right now, but with so many other variables out of my control doing my best meant gaming the current turn as well as I could without worrying about the future.

This detachment from future expectations meant I no longer cared about victory. I only cared about making the best possible choices each turn.

Making the perfect turn – one with no mistakes, every option considered, and best strategy and tactics applied – became my goal.

The effect was nearly instant. It was amazing. I immediately had more fun every game. Regardless of the results of my turns and the turns of others, I enjoyed how games played out. I enjoyed the challenge of making the perfect turn each time, though I did not achieve that goal often. Rather than getting upset at results, I now saw them as learning opportunities for my next stab at a perfect turn.

I have no idea if I won more games after that. I stopped counting. It was no longer important. Instead, I kept a mental record during games of mistakes to weigh next turn, and then watched the actions of others so I could learn from their mistakes and successes too.

I remember playing games with one player in particular who would make it his turn’s purpose – each and every turn – to counter me or weaken my position in the game. It didn’t matter what board game we were playing. And he’d do this without any attempt to win games himself. This used to bug me a lot. After my change in gameplay style, I thought this was funny. It was just another variable. I no longer took it personally. At that point, when I stopped getting upset when someone was deliberately trying to push my buttons, I realized this was the best way to play games for me.

The perfect turn for GMs

So, it is time to apply this philosophy to my GMing. I’ve got a campaign running right now. Forget the next one, I need to make the perfect turns now and end this campaign with a bang. Hopefully, a total party kill! Haha, just kidding. Maybe.

In addition, I need to sit back while in the game and just enjoy the moment. I need to think less about five minutes in the future and instead focus 100% on what’s happening now. The perfect turn requires the best roleplaying, tactics, refereeing and imagination in each moment.

To get ahead a little bit on mid-session reactions and planning, I’ll call more 2 minute breaks. While in a break I’ll think ahead.

Otherwise, the perfect turn for me is enjoying the company of friends and what’s happening in the game right now, not 3 rounds or 3 turns from now.

What is your perfect turn?

I hear from GMs periodically by email who have difficulty with certain players in their group. Some of the time I believe part of the issue rests with the GMs themselves. It takes two to tango well. Perhaps this perfect turn philosophy might help in those situations.

I’m also thinking this style might help GMs who feel overwhelmed or harried during games because there is too much going on. Maybe a solution for you is to stop living in the future and just live in the current moment?

Have more fun at every game!

In part one of this series, we presented a guest article by Garry Stahl, “The Conundrum Of Alignment”. Part two discussed the justification for alignment being part of the rules, looked at the arguement against oversimplified moral arguements, and concluded that the real problem with alignment was misuse attributable to the judgemental and morally-extremist labels that had been used. Part three offered a counterpoint to those arguements before returning to the central statement of Garry’s article and reexamining whether or not alignment really should be part of the game. It then described an alternative use of the Game Mechanics of Alignment that satisfies both sides of the question. In parts 4 and 5, I’m going to offer some practical examples from my own campaigns of ways to use these techniques to enhance your games, and generate the kind of complex moralities that Garry contended were not possible using Alignment.

Flavours Of Neutral

One of the subtexts of The Lord Of The Rings examines the conflict between a naturalistic world, in harmony with nature, and an industrialised world. This is very much a debate of our time; concerns over global warming are shaping policy decisions at the highest level (rightly or wrongly); industrial pollution has been a popular issue for activists since the 1970s (and can be viewed as a lasting outgrowth of the hippy subculture from the late 60s, if you care to); and we have been subject to repeated environmental scare campaigns of various sorts (overpopulation; the world running out of oil; the ecosystem in danger of collapse through loss of species; the ecosystem in danger of collapse from the destruction of the brazillian rainforest; the world running out of oil (again); the hole in the ozone layer; and so on and so forth) for so long that environmentalists have passed the point of being chicken little and now threaten to become the boy who cried ‘wolf’.

These issues could not be better-suited to being a source of friction and plotlines in an RPG if they were tailor-made for the purpose. There are so many possible perspectives to adopt that make for excellent sources of conflict and drama, it’s hard to know where to start; in fact, there are so many that it would be easy to go too far and overuse the theme.

In my “Fumanor: One Faith” campaign, like most D&D campaigns, questions of nature are the province of Druids, which are defined as being Neutral of alignment. Simplistic campaigns interpret this as meaning that they are colourless, with no strong opinions on anything, and are largely interchangeable in personality as a result. It was my contention that, like any organisation, the Druids would have a variety of perspectives on the great issues of the day, that they would have a variety of perspectives on the specific questions that fall within their province, and that they would have a variety of senses of urgancy about resolving those questions; as a result, they would have as many factions and unique perspectives as any other group or elected body. Those of similar perspective would tend to ally with each other, and you would get robust internal politics in the same way that you do in any Government.

In order to define those factions, and their common perspectives and plans of action and points of both agreement and conflict, I needed to be have a systematic means of examining the points of view on the subjects. For the solution, I turned to the mechanics of Alignment.

Some Backstory

In order to understand some of the differences between factions, you will need to appreciate a little of the campaign backstory.

In the “Fumanor: The Last Deity” campaign that preceeded “One Faith”, one of the PCs was a druid named Ceriseth, who was deeply concerned that the trend toward industrialisation would result in untold harm to nature. Ceriseth sought to turn aside the trend towards a confrontation between the Guardians Of Nature and human civilisation, before it turned violent; attempting through education and political reform to defuse the issues before antagonism became conflict. In the course of the campaign, he was responsible for releasing a diffusion of inteligence, awakening many semi-sentient species and giving those on the lower levels of awareness (like goblins) a step up relative to Elves, Humans, and Dwarves, the dominant species of the world. He also came into posession of an ancient artifact, the Helm Of Oak, which enabled any stand of trees (of specified minimum size) to serve as an extension of his personal Grove, animating and obeying his instructions, and allowing near-instantanious transport from one to another, abilities that proved critical in the epic conclusion to that campaign. As a reward for his service to the throne, his personal Grove was deemed to be a religious sanctuary, in effect a noble’s private estate.

In the interrim between campaigns, Ceriseth was killed under mysterious circumstances and his apprentice, a Verdonne (a more intelligent, more humanoid, type of Treant) named Briteoak, claimed the Helm Of Oak. Where Ceriseth had been a diplomat and conciliator, Briteoak was an impassioned zealot who led attacks on trading caravans and isolated farmsteads and villagers and became, effectively, an eco-terrorist. This was largely in response to a move by the government to end the tax-exempt status of the church, forgetting that the Druids were now covered by the same umbrella. Since Druids don’t take up collections, don’t ‘own’ businesses etc, they had no prospect of ever being able to pay the taxes that were imposed; what was to an organised religion merely an inconvenience was percieved as a direct attack on the Druidic Orders and their way of life.

There are a number of other threats and problems for the PCs to interact with – Church Corruption, an invading Empire Of Undead, Elvish Dragonriders (now that they have taken up the worship of Lolth), assimilation of Orcs, Ogres, and Drow into a society that was thier sworn enemies not so long ago, and the continuing conflict between the Chaos Powers and the Gods. The Goblins, meanwhile, have employed their greater intelligence to become a serious threat, mastering coordinated military actions to a far greater degree than any other sentient species. Recently, they have also begun mastering Arcane Magic – to a degree that’s impossible without tuition from someone who already knows it. The PCs have discovered that the Goblins are “collecting” Dragon Eggs for the Elves, and there is almost certainly an alliance of sorts between the two forces. These, and their implications, are the major plot threads running at this time in the campaign world.

== Campaign Side-note: In the Fumanor campaigns, every species has one knack at which they are naturally better than anyone else of equal intelligence. For Humans, its farming, which supports a greater population; for Elves, it’s a natural rapport with Life; for Drow, political intrigue; for Dwarves, mining; Orcs, survival; Halflings, handicrafts; Ogres, seige weaponry. Giving the Goblins a natural gift for military field tactics elevated the level of threat they posed and fitted with their past appearances in the Campaign, while being consistant with a naturally warlike tendancy.==

I should also explain that everything presented below was needed because the PCs, who are investigating the death Of Ceriseth, would be ‘unofficially’ present at a gathering of the Druidic Orders and would overhear the debate, and certain revelations of who had been doing what to whom – tying many campaign plot threads together. The PCs were of the opinion that the Druidic problem is a minor distraction – what they will learn in the course of the debates is that many of their bigger problems are of the size and scope that they are, because of Druidic involvement.

Definition Of Attitudes

I started the process of generating the different factions by looking at the range of issues that would matter to Druids as a whole, given the campaign world and its history. Since I knew that I was going to be applying the Mechanics of Alignment, I defined these in terms of the extremes of the perspectives.

Primary Attitudes: Pacifists Vs Militants

• Pacifist: favour negotiation, consider humans to be a part of nature. Identify with plants.
• Militant: favour violent destruction of humans; consider humans to have forfeighted any place in nature. Identify with animals.

Primary Attitudes: Populists Vs Elitists

• Populist: believe action must be achieved by targetting the ordinary citizen. Identify with grasses and herd animals.
• Elitist: believe action must be achieved by targetting the politically and socially affluant. Identify with Vines, Creepers, and Carnivores.

Primary Attitudes: Centrists

As always, two extremely divergant perspectives imply a middle ground, which I labelled “Centrists” after examining what the middle ground between these extreme primary attitudes looked like:

• Centrist: believe that it is not the place of the Druidic Orders to enforce Nature; nature will tend to it’s own. Identify with trees and other long-lived creatures.

Secondary Attitudes: Trendors vs Accusers

The dominant theological issue of the campaign; even within an alignment of neutrality, this would divide the Druidic Orders.

• Trendors: believe that the supplantation of the Chaos Powers by the Gods was a part of the natural cycle, and should not be resisted, but also believe that the Gods have been or should be supplanted in turn. Also tend to believe that the ends justify the means.
• Accusers: believe that the supplantation of the Chaos Powers by the Gods was a violation of the natural order, and the direct inspiration for the human willingness to violate the natural order. Also tend to believe that the ends can never justify the means.

Secondary Attitudes: Dominators vs Anarchists

Another divisive issue would be the role that the Druidic Orders should have – what they are, fundamentally.

• Dominators: believe that the Orders are the Stewards of nature, and are entitled to control and dominate it and its creatures. Consider the “Natural Order” to be an abstract theory.
• Anarchists: believe that the Orders are the Guardians of nature, and are required to destroy anything that seeks to harm it, however regretfully. Consider the “Natural Order” to be a manifest reality.

Secondary Attidudes: Philosophers

Once again, there is a middle ground between these extremes.

• Philosophers: believe that the Orders are the Spokesmen of nature, and are required only to enunciate and educate and advise. Consider the “Natural Order” to be an Abstract concept made manifest.

81 Flavours Of Neutral

Putting these together on a pair of familiar alignment charts gave 9 combinations of primary attitudes and 9 of secondary attitudes. By combining the descriptions of each attitude, an overall description of the ‘alignment’ resulted. Nine primary attitudes and nine secondary attitudes give 81 combinations – so the result was 81 ‘flavours of neutral’ within the Druidic Orders.

For example, for “Pacifist Populist Trendor Philosophers” I had: Believe action must be achieved by targetting the ordinary citizen. Identify with grasses and herd animals.favour negotiation, consider humans to be a part of nature. Identify with plants. believe that the supplantation of the Chaos Powers by the Gods was a part of the natural cycle, and should not be resisted, but also believe that the Gods have been or should be supplanted in turn. Also tend to believe that the ends justify the means. believe that the Orders are the Spokesmen of nature, and are required only to enunciate and educate and advise. Consider the “Natural Order” to be an Abstract concept made manifest.

This is as sophisticated a definition of a political position as you will find anywhere. More, because all possible attitudes within the target questions were considered, every possible result is listed – a systematic approach that yields comprehensive results.

Factions Analysis

Of course, the results were not very practical for use; they needed to be individually analysed and rationalised and rendered into coherant factions within the internal Politics of the Druidic Orders. More, because the questions represented by the different ‘alignment’ axes are not entirely unrelated, it was likely that some of the combinations would be incompatable.

I needed to look at what each faction would do about their beliefs, at what they might already have done, at how each faction would contribute to the debate, and so on. I wanted coalitions to come together organically from the different flavours of Neutral that I had defined.

I was greatly helped in that I knew that Ceriseth had formed the centre of a pro-diplomacy faction, while Briteoak was at the heart of a more activist faction, and I had some idea of what the members of that faction had already done within the campaign – I just needed to find the right ‘justification’ for those decisions. I also knew that for a significant change of direction such as had occurred, I needed a group of moderates holding the balance of power who could be swayed one way or the other.

As I analysed each ‘flavour of neutral’, I first tried to synthesize a coherant and consistant philosophy from the attitudes, then I looked for who they would agree with. The factions quickly took shape. Below are the results.

Factions Within The Druidic Orders of Fumanor

The Alliance Of Oak:

Patient, coalition builders. Want to reform humanity, which they believe worth saving. The Alliance Of Oak comprises 5 Druidic Orders.

• The Order Of The Scythe – Nature decreed that the Gods supplanting of the Chaos Powers was part of the natural cycle, and that the Gods will in turn be supplanted. As such, Nature is superior to the Gods, and Druids are her spokesmen. They favour negotiating with the authorities for the right to educate the common citizens in this philosophy in the same way that the Churches educate in the nature of the Divine, and believe that any means used to drive negotiations to a positive result are justified. (Pacifist Populist Trendor Philosophers)
• The Order of Honeysuckle – agree with the Scythes on every point save one: the specifically want to educate the elite, believing that meaningful change in human society can only come from the top down. While they occasionally lose patience with the Scythes, who are more patient and deliberate, the two are strong allies. (Pacifist Elitist Trendor Philosophers)
• The Order Of Oaks – also part of the Scythe/Honeysuckle coalition, they are moderates and believe that no plan that only targets one level of society can be successful; they favour a more complex approach in which a grassroots ‘revolution’ empowers selected nobles who have been specifically chosen as spokesmen within the inner circles. They also serve as the peacemakers between the other members of the Alliance. Ceriseth was an Oak. (Pacifist Centrist Trendor Philosophers)
• The Order Of The Sparrow – Agree with the Oaks but like to pretend to an independance. Oaks tolerate this because ‘persuading’ the Sparrows permits them to expound and pontificate their points repeatedly. (True Populist Trendor Philosophers)
• The Order Of The Willow – Agree with the coalition in general, but feel that no action is necessary; nature will tend to its own. The role of the orders (in their view) is to understand nature, and to preserve the truth of nature, passing it on to all who wish to learn. Swing votes within the Alliance Of Oak, these will support the more moderate Hawks if convinced that the Orders themselves are under direct threat, or that inaction is no longer a viable option, but only to the point of restoring the previous status quo – short-term engagements with defined and practical objectives. Swinging this Order into agreement with the Hawks is amongs the primary goals of Briteoak’s Moot. If he succeeds, they may even split from the Alliance Of Oak and realign – temporarily – with the Hawk Faction. (Populist Centrist Trendor Philosophers)

The Hawk Coalition

The Hawk Coalition are Impatient, sometimes impetuous, and fairly independant. They will persue their own agenda regardless of the outcome of the Moot, but want a consensus in order to gain the support of the Orders in escelating their campaign. There are eight large Orders within the Coalition at this time.

• The Order Of The Hawk – Agree with just about everything in the Oaken Coalition’s perspective, the one exception being what should be done about it. The Hawks favor an aggressive policy of containment and eventual extermination of humans, believing that it is too late for them to be saved; they have started over by educating and nurturing a favoured race to supplant humans, the Goblins, and have forged an alliance with the Elves under Lolth, who agree with this philosophy. Responsible for persuading the Goblins to aggressively target human leaders and political targets, and want the remaining orders to stay out of their way. (Militant Populist Trendor Philosophers, Militant Elitist High Philosophers, and Militant Centrist High Philosophers)
• The Order Of The Wolverine – Agree with the Hawks, but maintain a semblance of independance to serve the same function within the Coalition as the Sparrows do for the Oaken Alliance. Occasionally oppose the Hawks to maintain this ‘independance’, usually on matters on which the Hawk Coalition have sufficient consensus that their votes are unneccessary. (Militant Populist Trendor Anarchist)
• The Order Of Ivy – Agree with the Hawks. They want to persuade the moot to attack humans openly and directly so that their Goblin Tribes are not forced down the path of trying to compete with Humans in military strength, which can only lead to the spread of the “human contamination” into the Goblin culture. The leaders of the Coalition, despite the name. They especially want to target the Churches, believing that if they can be forced into line, both the Gods (by virtue of their natures) and the human political leaders will have no choice but to follow. (Militant Elitist Trendor Philosophers, Militant Elitist Philosopher Dominators)
• The Order Of The Thistle – Agree with the Hawks and Ivys, but believe that a direct threat to leading humans is not going to be enough to achieve the Coalition’s goals; they favour coordinated strikes against both the human leaders and the agricultural and natural resources that give those leaders their power. Briteoak is a Thistle. (Militant Centrist Trendor Philosophers)
• The “Baby Hawks” (Populist Elitist Trendor Philosophers) – these are incompatable beliefs. Subsumed into Hawks & Ivys, but are less prone to violent reactions within those factions. Believe in action tomorrow, not today. Known deprecatingly as the “Baby Hawks”, because they back the Hawks until the time comes to do something, then procrastinate and waver.
• The Order Of The Bear – consists predominantly of non-humans. Most rabid members of the Hawk Coalition, they favour an even more agressive all-out-war of conquest against humans. Only when humans are completely dominated by the Druidic Orders can they be rendered impotent to interfere. Responsible for directing Goblin attacks on trade routes, farmsteads, and isolated villages.
  • Militant Elitist Trendor Dominators – mostly elves, some Ogre Magi. Favour a bottom-to-top approach to the human problem, focussing on the farmsteads and villages.
  • Militant Elitist Accuser Dominators – mostly elves, some Ogre Magi. Favour a top-down approach to the human problem, focussing on the trade routes.
  • Militant Elitist Trendor Anarchists – even more extremist sub-order who don’t want to stop with conquest, the demand total annihilation of the human race. Gnolls, Bugbears, Some traditionalist/hardline Drow, some Elves.
  • Militant Centrist Accuser Anarchist – Minotaurs, Halflings & Gnomes.
• The Order Of The Wildfire – Agree with the Crickets and Wasps (below) about the Heavenly Rebellion and its relationship to the human attitude. They favour the violent destruction of humans by using their own weapons against them, finding ways to concentrate the consequences of their “unnatural perversions” apon the common citizens so that crops will not grow, and the corrupters cannot breathe, so that humans alone will suffer the consequences of their actions; want to wall off the rest of nature against them. Many Goblin druids populate this faction. Close allies of the Bears, they tend to be heard carefully as their goals are more specific and less abstract than the Bears, who are less focussed and more indiscriminate in their violent opposition to humans. (Militant Populist Accuser Dominators, Militant Centrist Accuser Dominators, True Populist Accuser Dominators, Populist Centrist Accuser Dominators, and Militant Centrist Philosopher Dominators).
• The Order Of The Cougar – A splinter faction of the order of the Wildcat, formerly members of the Arbitrationalists, they believe that Ceriseth’s envoy to human society represented the one chance that humans are entitled to, and that their betrayal of the agreements with him means that they have failed to heed the message; they have had their last chance, and to have forfeighted any place within nature and should now be crushed. Now close allies with the Order Of The Bear. (Militant Populist Accuser Anarchist, Militant Elitist Accuser Anarchist, True Populist Accuser Anarchist).

The Arbitrationalist Coalition:

Favour forcing humans into negotiation. Swing voters who have supported the Hawks in recent times. Four Orders make up this faction, which is very much a marraige of convenience.

• The Order Of The Badger – Agree with the Hawk Coalition to a limited extent, in that they believe in forcing Humans to the negotiating table by targetting the source of their livelyhoods. They desire equal status with the Churches, right up to and including an Advisor to the Court. They believe that the “Natural Order” is an artificially-imposed heirarchy, and that all nature is equal. Swing votes that currently side with the Hawk Coalition but can join with the “Baby Hawks” at any time to bring an end to the violence. Keeping the Badgers on-side is an ongoing effort for the Hawk Coalition, and much of Briteoak’s address will be directed at them. (Pacifist Populist Trendor Dominators, Pacifist Centrist Trendor Anarchist, Pacifist Populist High Philosophers, Pacifist Populist Philosopher Dominators, True Populist Philosopher Dominators; also
  Militant Populist Trendor Dominators, who have incompatable beliefs and have been subsumed into the Badgers, where they form the most vitriolic supporters of Briteoak within the Coalition).
• The Order Of The Bee – Agree with the Badgers, but want to target the elite directly. Less likely to waver until Briteoak achieves equality with the Church – which, to their minds, includes a Druidic Grove, sponsored by the Crown, in every community where there is a church, chapel, shrine, or temple. This objective is completely impractical and unrealistic. (Pacifist Elitist Trendor Dominators, Pacifist Elitist High Philosophers, and Pacifist Elitist Philosopher Dominators).
• The Order Of The Wildcat – blame the troubles on the superior position of the Gods over nature in human society, and believe the Orders should be the Guardians of nature, charged with pruning those that seek to harm it. While they favour forced negotiations like the other Arbitrationalists, they also consider this to be humanaity’s only chance; unless progress is achieved quickly, they will drift further toward the Hawks in allegiance. Briteoak’s revelations during the moot will prompt an attempted resolution to issue an ultimatum; if negotiations do not begin immediatly, they will ally with the Wildfires and demand immediate action. There are two significant subfactions within the Order: Pacifist Elitist Accuser Anarchist and Pacifist Elitist Anarchist Philosophers want to specifically target the nobles and then negotiate with the commons from a position of dominance, while the Pacifist Centrist Accuser Anarchists want to target all levels of human society, no second chances.
• The Order Of The Goat – Agree with the objectives of the Bees and with the Badgers about everything else, which makes them more practical in objectives. If they were to merge with the Bees, they would bring that Order some much-needed perspective, but they find the constant drone of arguement in favour of something they consider unrealistic, unfeasable, and quite ridiculous, to be quite irritating. The friction between these two groups ensure that the Arbitrationalists are actually one of the most arguementative and fractious factions. (Pacifist Centrist Trendor Dominators, Pacifist Elitist Trendor Anarchists, Pacifist Centrist Philosopher Dominators)

The Humanitarian Accord:

A loose alliance of pro-human orders, currently form a voting bloc with the Alliance Of Oak with whom several member orders have close associations. Most humans would be surprised and a little disturbed by the opinions of their strongest advocates.

• The Order Of The Sky – Believe that the Druidic Orders should replace the Church, and that since Humans and their Gods will never accept this, they must be destroyed before they do incalculable harm to the natural world. Extremist Hard-line Environmentalists. However, they also believe that this can never be achieved until the Gods have destroyed (or at least dominate utterly) the Chaos Powers, so these are currently pro-human pro-church. Allied with the Order of Honeysuckle in particular, and are utterly reliable members of that alliance. They are amongst the most fervant opposition to the Hawk Coalition, and (politically) are used as attack dogs when the two major coalitions collide. (Militant Centrist Trendor Dominators and Populist Centrist Trendor Dominators).
• The Order Of Earth – Agree with the Sky Order in most respects, but believe that the Gods can never succeed in destroying the Chaos powers while they are constrained by the human church.. They want to tear down the churches and ‘free’ the gods to follow their natures. As such, they are considered unreliable by the Coalition of Oak. (True Populist Trendor Dominators).
• The Order Of The Cricket – A very large group within the Accord, this Order believes that the supplantation of the Chaos Powers by the Gods was a violation of the natural order, and the direct inspiration for the human willingness to violate nature. Pacifists, they believe that the ends can never justify the means. The Orders should the Spokesmen of nature, and are required only to enunciate and educate and advise, and want to proselytise the ordinary citizen relentlessly, with or without the permission of the human authorities. (Pacifist Populist Accuser Philosophers, True Populist Accuser Philosophers, Populist Centrist Accuser Philosophers, Militant Populist High Philosophers, True Populist High Philosophers, and Populist Centrist Philosopher Dominators)
• The Order Of The Cicada – Agree with the Crickets but believe that the political and social elite will not permit the common citizens to listen or act unless they are convinced first. Favour negotiations to obtain formal permission and an immediate cessation of all hostilities. Aurella’s Brother is a Cicada. (Pacifist Elitist Accuser Philosophers, Pacifist Centrist Accuser Philosophers, and Pacifist Centrist High Philosophers).
• The Order Of The Ant – The Ants believe that it was the act of rebellion against the chaos powers by the Gods that is responsible for human society’s rebellion against a harmony with nature, a very similar perspective to that of the Sky Order. They feel that it is not too late for the Human Race, but they can only be saved if they are released from the domination of the Gods and their church. They want the Orders to be the stewards of Nature, but fear that a direct confrontation with the Gods over the primacy of Nature will corrupt the Orders to such an extent that they will no longer be worthy of their lofty position, as the ends do not justify the means; their solution is to assist the Chaos Powers in their battle against the Gods to a limited and sharply-defined victory, and that the best way to achieve this is to enlighten the common citizens of the cause of ‘all their problems’. Responsible for establishing more pro-Chaos cults than any other single organisation. The Ants will be energised by Briteoak’s revelations which they consider tangible evidence of the ‘corruption’ of the Druidic Orders that they fear, and will blame the Hawks and their ill-advised campaign of agression for the results; their opposition to the Hawks will stiffen as a result. (Pacifist Populist Accuser Dominators)
• The Order Of The Mammoth – agree with the Ants on virtually everything but see the ‘enlightenment’ of the common citizen by the ants as just a stepping-stone to enacting “true reform” – a Chaos Cult within the ranks of the nobility. (Pacifist Elitist Accuser Dominators)
• The Order of the Reed – agree with the Sky Order about just about everything but believe that the hard-liners are impatient; time, and nature itself, will achieve these ends. Do-nothing moderates, they block most calls for action on the part of the Sky Order. While Briteoak hopes that his revelations at the moot will force this order to reappraise their stance and realign them with the Hawks, they will instead seize on his revelations as proof that they were right all along, and the battle will continue. However, they will strengthen their ties with the Ants as a result of the revelations. (Pacifist Elitist Accuser Dominators, Populist Centrist Accuser Anarchist, and Populist Centrist High Philosophers).

The Independant Orders:

A hodge-podge of Druidic Orders who currently belong to no particular faction. Swinging voters.

• The Order Of The Basilisk – believe that the conflict between Gods and Chaos powers is a reflection of the conflict of fang and claw, and a part of nature. As such, they want two things: For the chaos powers to have their own, officially-sanctioned churches and church hierarchy, and for both church organisations to be subordinate to the Druidic Orders. Former members of the Arbitrationalists, with whom they generally agree, but who also support Briteoak’s current campaign of human subjugation. They tend to ignore agreements and understandings and do what they want; it was for breaking ranks with the other Arbitrationalists that they were expelled. Fervently opposed to any level of ‘deification’ of Ceriseth, who they consider to have been biased and unworthy of his place in history. (Pacifist Populist Trendor Anarchist)
• The Order Of The Scorpion – Former members of the Hawk Coalition who were expelled for arguing their point of view in Moot after the Coalition had heard all member Orders privately and negotiated a united front. Believe that the supplantation of the Chaos Powers by the Gods was a part of the natural cycle, and should not be resisted, but also believe that the Gods will be supplanted in turn by the Druidic Orders; the Orders are the Guardians of nature, and are required to destroy anything that seeks to harm it, however regretfully; the ends justify ANY means. The scorpions favour the violent destruction of humans; consider humans to have forfeighted any place in nature. However, they also believe that humans could not have caused so much trouble without the implicit blessings of the Gods, and it is they who the Scorpions hold ultimately responsible. It is their contention that the Gods oppose the Chaos Powers because the Gods want to deny the Chaos Powers their fundamental natures and make them ‘just like them’, and it is this conflict with reality that has engendered the “perverse abberations fostered by humans.” The Scorpions choose vitriolic but erudite speakers to represent them, who will rail against anyone who disagrees with the Scorpion Philosophy. They don’t expect converts, they do expect their views to be given equal time to that of any Faction. Usually vote with the Hawks because the Hawks favour aggressive action against ‘the perversions of humans’. The order is divided into three subfactions: Populist Elitist Trendor Anarchists, who want to start with the common citizens as it’s they who are doing the damage; True Populist Trendor Anarchists, who want to start with the common citizens and believe that will be enough; and Militant Centrist Trendor Anarchists – who don’t care but want to start now!
• The Order Of the Wasp – Agree with the Crickets about the Chaos Powers vs Gods conflict and its relationship to the human attitude. However, they want to proselytise every human and immediatly destroy any who do not reform then and there. This makes their agenda too extreme for the Humanitarians and too radical for the Oaks and Arbitrationalists. The Hawks think the Wasp’s plan to be naive and simplistic. Since no-one takes their proposal or point of view seriously, they tend to sit around in a huff and glower. (Militant Populist Accuser Philosophers, Populist Elitist Accuser Philosophers, and Militant Elitist Accuser Philosophers – the latter want to target the social and political elite, who should already know better, and that the nobles will force the commons to follow.)

Not represented:

There are a number of philosophies that are utterly incompatable and irreconcilable. No Orders subscribe to these attitudes, though lone (and confused) Druids may do so:
Populist Elitist Trendor Dominators, Populist Centrist Trendor Anarchist, Militant Centrist Accuser Philosophers, Populist Elitist Accuser Dominators, Pacifist Populist Accuser Anarchist, Populist Elitist Accuser Anarchist, Populist Elitist High Philosophers, Populist Elitist Philosopher Dominators, Pacifist Populist Anarchist Philosophers, Pacifist Centrist Anarchist Philosophers, Militant Populist Anarchist Philosophers, Militant Elitist Anarchist Philosophers, Militant Centrist Anarchist Philosophers, Populist Elitist Anarchist Philosophers, True Populist Anarchist Philosophers, and Populist Centrist Anarchist Philosophers.

Wider Politics

It can be argued that any political question can be simplified down to two opposing extreme perspectives, around which factions coalesce, whose members may disagree vehemently on lesser issues. When these primary political questions cease to be dominant or relevant, political alliances break up, discover new central questions, and recombine to form new political factions.

The alignment mechanism is an ideal way to comprehensively analyse party positions to guage the constituants of any political faction and contrast them with their opposition. But it works equally well in reverse – to generate political factions and opinions on the most vexing issues of the day. It might be that existing political factions appear too entrenched to divide and recombine into new parties, but it could happen at any time. All you need is an issue so divisive as to split both parties, and a weakening of their differences in other areas.

In the final part of the series, I will offer an opposing perspective to the traditional D&D labels in “Dark Shadows”.

This post is the end of a long road! It started with a guest article by Garry Stahl, “The Conundrum Of Alignment”. Parts two and three highlighted what I believe to be the causes of the problems Garry identified, and provided an alternative perspective on Alignment that turned it into one of the most useful and powerful tools at the GM’s disposal, while eliminating those problems at the same time. In part four, I offered an example of the use of this technique for the generation of a complex political structure within a single “old school” alignment, an all-neutral association of Druidic Orders. In this final part, I’m going to talk about the interpretation of alignment in my Shards Of Divinity campaign.

Dark Shadows

What is an “Evil Campaign”? Is it a campaign in which the PCs are all dark and sinister bad guys, but the rest of the world has a traditional moral focus? Is it a campaign in which the dominant powers are evil and the characters have no choice in their starting morality? Is it a campaign set in a dystopia in which the bad guys usually win instead of the “good guys always win” that we’re more accustomed to? Or is it a campaign in which the normal alignments are viewed from a twisted, cynical perspective which gives characters of any moral fibre licence to be as rotten as they want?

Most of these options can provide a good campaign premise, but when I started prepping my Shards Of Divinity campaign, and promised my players an “evil campaign”, the latter is what I had in mind. Throughout the campaign background, selfish self-interest overwhelmed everything from honesty, duty, fealty, and honour, all the way through to the parent-child bond itself.

That alone is enough to make the world ruthless, and scheming, and merciless, and selfish, and darkly cynical, but it wasn’t enough to make it truly Evil. To achieve that, I had to twist the very concepts of morality to make these acts not only ever-present and successful, but to make them moral.

In order to ensure that the players got the point, I decided to deliberately use the standard labels for alignment, and merely change the definitions. The contrast between the way in which these were usually percieved and the way I would describe them would explain the innately evil perspective of the world far more clearly than anything else could.

I must emphasise that these were not intended to be the way these alignments were percieved, as though the philosophies behind them had simply been misinterpreted; these were to be the true definitions, as expounded by the holy books of the world, as accurate a definition of the morality of the Gods as the usual descriptions are in a standard D&D campaign.

The Introduction

What follows is the introduction to the section on alignment in the House Rules for the Shards Of Divinity campaign, edited slightly for clarity. It is followed, as it was in those House Rules, by the definitions of the alignments themselves, and by discussions of various other aspects of alignment which the players needed to know about.

I must pay tribute where it is due – one of the key supplements apon which the Shards Of Divinity campaign was founded is “Evil” by AEG, and SOME of what is presented below derives from that book. As I wrote when I included it in my top-20 3.x supplements, For anyone who contemplates a campaign with evil PCs, this supplement is essential reading. It’s only slightly less useful and important for anyone who merely wants to have NPCs to throw at their players. Hey, what do you know – that’s just about everyone. Even if you aren’t using 3.x; even if your campaign isn’t fantasy, it’s Sci-Fi or Wild West or whatever; even if you’re playing a choose-your-own-adventure (!), this is still recommended reading.

The nature of an Evil campaign

Read any supplement on running an Evil Character or an Evil Campaign and you will soon discover that they all assume that being “Good” is the natural default state of sentients, and that some reason or event is responsible for pushing the character towards “The Dark Side”.

What poppycock! The Shards Of Divinity campaign takes place in a world in which the natural order is Neutral Evil, with slight lawful tendancies. It’s normal to place your own needs at the top of the heap. People unite into national bodies and other affilliations through mutual self-interest (enlightened or otherwise). If a ruler places the welfare of his people ahead of his own immediate needs, it is because that is sometimes the price that must be paid in order for him to continue receiving the perqs and fringe benefits that go with the job in the long term. The only difference lies in whether or not he accepts a reduction in immediate material gratification over other, less tangible, forms of gratification.

The World, in one sense, is pessimistic – everyone assumes that everyone else is going to put themeselves first. Some people are willing to suffer a lack of gratification now in exchange for an eternity of gratification in the afterlife, and that’s a fair-enough position to take – but thats STILL looking out for #1. And some people are foolish – there’s a sucker born every minute.

Organisations bribe (there’s no other word for it) their members with benefits for assisting the Organisation, either by amassing power and authority that can be wielded, when necessary, on the member’s behalf, or with some other reward.

The problem with attributing some need or cause to a character’s “Turn To Evil” is the question of what happens if and when that need is fulfilled. In this context, reading the “Evil” supplement by AEG makes it clear that some clarification of Alignments is necessary, given that the context assumed is so different from that which is generally accepted. By avoiding the whole concept of “Turning to evil”, that problem (which could derail the entire campaign) is avoided.

Chaotic Good

Chaotic characters think they know better. Their unifying concept tends to be ‘look out for the little guy’. They are convinced that (in general) Bureacracies are inherantly vulnerable to corruption, and hence can never fulfill their mandate of ensuring that everyone gets “their fair share”. However, smaller bureacracies can keep corruption manageable far better than the massive, bloated institutions preferred by those of Lawful Alignment. They never make plans that will take more than a year or so to come to fruition, and prefer to live one day at a time. Chaotic Characters tend to have “Fear Of The Big Guy” as their unifying factor.

They also believe that bureacracies are inflexible, and can’t keep up with a changing world, no matter how beneficial they may be in the short term, and that the ends can never justify the means, because circumstances will have rendered those ends meaningless by the time you get there.

Each CG character has a personal philosophy that they live by (whether they can articulate it or not) and tend to think that if everyone simply adopted that philosophy, the world would be a better place. No two if these personal philosophies are ever the same.

Neutral Good

NG Characters believe that some level of Bureacracy is necessary, but too much is just as bad as not enough. They often justify the satisfaction of ambition in terms of what they will be able to achieve after the victory. They think that Lawful characters get carried away with their grand plans and lose track of the practicalities of the situation, but that some level of detailed planning is necessary.

NG characters will make plans for periods of 5 to 10 years, and will tend to include strategies for early exits from plans that aren’t working out. They avoid committing themselves irrevocably to anything.

Lawful Good

LG is beauracratic. The LG character wants to ensure that everyone gets ‘Their Fair Share”. They can be generous in exchange for promised rewards in the afterlife. Usually, they consider the price, and the danger, of disobeying the law to be disproportionate to the benefits received – at least in the long term.

Lawful characters are planners, and tend to look at the big picture. They often make plans that may not be complete in their lifetime, convinced that someone else will see the project through – they are often idealists & dreamers. Good characters generally try to be popular. IT IS LAWFUL GOOD FOR A PALADIN TO REFUSE TO LAY HANDS ON A MEMBER OF THE UNFAITHFUL.

Lawful Good characters can quite happily serve an evil master, convinced that they are thus in a position to moderate more extreme villainy, or that the ultimate ends justify the means. They also believe that an unjust law is preferable to no law at all. At it’s simplest, LG characters act noble because the resulting adoration strokes their egos.

Chaotic Neutral

Chaotics tend to do what they want when they want it, doing whatever seemed like a good idea at the time.

Chaotic Neutrals are prone to consider themselves to be ‘one of the boys’ or the equivalent, neither foolish enough to waste their lives in altruism or greedy enough to put themselves ahead of the common man. They tend to ignore laws they don’t feel like following, unless seriously concerned about getting caught, and don’t believe in planning for the future, or in rehashing the past; they consider themselves to be too practical for such nonsense.

True Neutral

The True Neutral has rules – but interprets them flexibly. They care little for the welfare of the common herd, and usually have a broadly-defined social group or other collection of creatures whose interests they place in the ascendancy.

Druids, for example, are usually either floracentric or faunacentric; the first contructs a grove as a haven for plants and takes in animals as defenders of the grove; the second constructs a grove as a santuary for animals and takes in plants for the shade, shelter, and food that they provide.

The less tolerant of endless debate about philosophy a character is, the more neutral they tend to be, lacking a strong passion for any specific perspective.

Lawful Neutral

LN Characters believe that rules are paramount above all. The ability to make and enforce rules is what seperates the sentient from the beasts. It is when most tempted to break the rules that it is most necessary to adhere to them.

Lawful Neutrals do not make plans, they make procedures for developing plans – and follow the outcomes religiously. But procedures are utterly dependant on the assumptions on which they are founded, and tend to flounder when presented with a new situation, fumbling around in search of an analogy apon which to base a procedure that will generate a plan – which hopefully will solve the problem.

For example, if the application of a law is biased against the poor – for whatever reason – and the laws are founded on the premise that all are equal before them, the Lawful Neutral is lost, or worse yet, tries to add a clause to ‘even the scales’ which usually just provides another loophole for the rich to crawl through.

Lawful Neutrals are at their best coping with effects, not causes. Some have a personal code which they will employ as the guiding principle of everything they do, and which they will impose on others if given the chance, no matter how poorly it may apply. Nevertheless, if they give their word, they will honour it in both word and spirit; this just makes them more cautious about giving that word. Lawful Neutrals are often referred to as Judges, beacuse they judge everything around them according to an inflexible standard – their own, or one that they have accepted as their own.

Chaotic Evil

The unifying factor that binds Chaotic Evil characters together with others is not a foolish idealism or mediocre conformity, it’s ‘fear of the big guy’. Chaotic Evil has a reputation for being the “evilest evil” because big red dragons and “unspeakable demons from hell” were chaotic evil. There is in fact a connection, but it is actually in the other direction: Big Red isn’t powerful because he’s chaotic evil, he’s chaotic evil because he’s powerful (when you win almost any arguement by saying, “Tell it to the Breath Weapon” there’s not a lot of incentive to be reasonable or organised).

Chaotic Evil is Lazy Evil; it gets things done in the simplest and most direct way, without worrying about consequences. Chaotic Evil can also be considered “Efficiency” by its adherants. Want your neighbour’s house? Conk him on the head and move in (posession is nine-tenths of the law, or so it is said). Don’t like big, brawny do-gooders creeping into your house at night? Waste ’em. Then park the bodies where they’ll never resurface. Nothing troubling you at the moment? Take a nap, or better yet, a night off for celebration.

Chaotic Evil types tend to hang out together because they understand one another. One will quickly establish himself as the pack leader and then it’s on with the fun – and no sense of responsibility dragging you down. These groups don’t have a lot of rules or formal structures; the boss is the boss because he gets things done and busts any heads that disagree. The underlings want to be the boss, and sooner or later one will get too ambitious – if the leader doesn’t crush him like a bug first – but in the meantime…

Chaotic Evil groups are akin to bikie gangs in old 1950s horror movies – tough, mean, and unpredictable, they ride in and take what they want and then ride out – because there’s no reason to stay; they’re off to the next town ripe for the picking.

Individually, Chaotic Evil types tend to be tougher and more resourceful when cornered because they’re more likely to do crazy things like fight to the death, or meet a massed charge with one of their own. Their tactics tend to be built around mobility, surprise, and overwhelming force. But because they burn twice as bright, they last only half as long.

Chaotic Evil characters hate to back down from an open fight. They are macho, bravura, the fastest gun, the meanest dog with the toughest fleas. They would rather go down fighting than lose face.

Lawful Evil

If Chaotic Evil is the motorcycle gang who kick down your door, steal your stuff, then burn the house down for kicks, Lawful Evil is the faceless bureacracy that seizes your house through eminant domain laws, confiscates your property with a court-ordered foreclosure, puts your pet down because he wasn’t registered, and then offers to rent your old house back to you at a ‘reasonable rate’. Lawful Evil is organised, methodolical, and insidious.

Violence is the last resort, resorted to only if blackmail, bribery, threats, intimidation, and devious backroom political manouverings have failed – and then at the hands of some lackey who can take the fall if necessary.

Lawful Evil hates open fights only a little more than they hate any sort of fighting; it would much rather sneak into your bedroom, cast a sleep spell to male sure you’re really out, then put a pillow over your face. SO much tidier.

Lawful evil is all about obedience, order, and deferring gratification. Where chaotic evil wants it now, lawful evil wants it all, and if it has to wait ten years to wear you down, it will – the sacrifice will make the victory all the sweeter.

Lawful evil organisations might have a few noteworthy individuals who serve as champions and leaders, but for the most part they produce cogs in a machinery of oppression – break one and another pops out of the military academy (or equivalent) to take their place, and the machine rolls on.

They are masterminds and plotters – they will have a plan, and then a contingancy plan if the first doesn’t work. And if they are smart enough, jumping off points and plausible deniability and a backup contingancy plan and at least three hidden exits and two patsies.

If Lawful Evil has a flaw, it is that it has trouble coping with surprises and the unexpected; if they do not have a plan for whatever occurs, they will tend to flounder and make mistakes. They seek to avoid this uncomfortable situation by planning for as many contingancies as possible.

Neutral Evil

Neutral Evil people are sometimes described as Chaotic Evil with a modicum of impulse control. They both respect laws (for other people) and try to find a way around those laws for themselves.

There may be a social structure around them, but it is loosely created and even less adhered to. The ideal position for a neutral evil is one in which they opposition have been convinced to play by the rules – while the neutral evil breaks those rules at every opportunity. They are hypocrites and two-faced liers.

Their goal is not to amass wealth or power, they simply want whatever is at hand for the taking – and once they have finished with it, they will drop it in a ditch and move on. A Neutral Evil character will go to any lengths to obtain their satisfaction – patience, diplomacy, bartering, or even working with a ‘good’ group.

Where you can trust Chaotic Evil to rampage, and Lawful Evil to tyrannize, you just can’t trust Neutral Evil to do anything; they even break their own rules when they find it convenient to do so. They have no problems with impluse control, they can machinate with the best of them – but it usually sounds too much like work; it’s much better to have some flunky in the background doing all the boring stuff and simply keep that flunky intimidated, or well paid, or both.

Neutral Evils like to insinuate themselves into an existing society and abuse it for their own gain while maintaining an air of innocence.

An Evil Party

For an Evil Party to work, every member must have his own reasons for being there. The overall party will take on the characteristics of the strongest member – if he is Chaotic Evil, then so will be the party. The roles within the party dynamic will adapt to reflect this style; the Lawful Evil will carefully manipulate the leader, or try to; other Chaotic Evil types will seek to challenge the leader at the first sign of weakness; and the Neutral Evils will do whatever they want anyway – behind the leader’s back, and if they think they can get away with it.

When another character becomes dominant, these roles and relationships will change, and the party will disintigrate quickly – unless the new leader can satisfy the other members of the party quickly, giving the Chaotics the chance to get rowdy, the Nuetrals the chance for immediate gain, and the Lawfuls the chance to advance their own plots (or be convinced that the new leader’s plots mean more for everyone).

Other Alignments in an Evil Party

The definitions given above should make it clear that there is NO barrier to characters of ANY alignment working with an Evil Party, even on a medium- to long-term basis. However, there will be obvious frictions every now and then between such characters and the Evil master of the party.

Chaotic Evil characters can deal with such frictions the same way they would any other challenge to their authority – by putting the moralising scum in their place. But that is only deferring the problem. A better solution is some simple blackmail.

Neutral Evil characters, in general, don’t care – they can publicly support the ‘foreign’ perspective while doing what they want to do anyway; it’s just a question of how duplicitous they have to be.

Lawful Evil characters can cope best with other alignments in the party, and other alignments can better cope with their presence. Just as they know that they will have to provide a certain degree of opportunity for looting and pillaging to keep the chaotic evils happy, the lawful evils will know that they have to give lawful good followers the chance to occasionally do a good deed, or talk them out of some evil scheme (usually one set up for no other purpose). Letting Chaotic Good characters perform the occasional random act of kindness – in your name – helps insulate you against your true nature. So long as he has hopes of eventually achieving a greater good, the most pure Paladin can serve the vilest black-hearted fiend. And to maintain their power base and keep the support of their henchmen, the vilest black-hearted fiend can permit the occasional act of charity or generosity – it’s for their own benefit in the long run.

Players should not let the ‘darker’ nature of the Shards Of Divinity campaign, or the fact of an Evil Party Alignment, dictate your character’s alignment. It might be more challenging – and more fun – to play a Lawful Good character in the service of such a party.

INTELLIGENCE AND EVIL

Intelligent Evil

First impressions might suggest that intelligent characters would favour Lawful Evil alignments. This is not necessarily the case, though the applicability of intelligence is clearly more obvious with the Lawful Evil alignment. Chaotic Evil characters need to think quickly since they aren’t the type to plan ahead; while Lawful Evil characters can get away with less intelligence applied systematically. It can even be argued that Chaotic Evil needs to be more intelligent! Neutral Evil faces similar demands, where the challenge is to identify what they most want and hatch a short-term plot to achieve it. Since the number of personal gains outnumbers the number of potential group gains, it can also be argued that they are the most intelligent.

While intelligence can be more obviously applied to Lawful Evil, never make the mistake of underestimating the other alignments!

Stupid Evil

Once again, first impressions are that Chaotic Evil is more suited to those of lower intellectual capabilities, but this is not necessarily the case.

It is often suggested, only half-humerously, that criminal masterminds all need a 6-year-old child ‘on staff’ to spot the holes in their overcomplicated plots; a less intelligent but more diligent Lawful Evil character is better able to dispense with this. Their plots might lack some of the sophistication of their more intelligent counterparts, but the very simplicity of their plans makes them more likely to succeed.

It can be argued, therefore, that lower intelligence is more beneficial for Lawful Evil characters than Chaotic Evil ones! Neutral Evil characters rarely rely exclusively on their intelligence anyway, substituting equal measures of chutzpah and personal charm. They also derive the same benefits as Lawful Evil characters of less intelligence – being less likely to become overwhelmed by their own intelligence, they tend to be more direct and more effective. The moral: don’t let an INT score dictate your alignment; let your alignment dictate how you use your INT.

WISE EVIL

Wisdom denotes willpower, common sense, perception, and intuition, according to the PHB. This is a definition of only limited utility; Perception is divided by the system into Spot and Search, and only one of these is based on Wisdom. Common Sense is fine – until you run into a character who knows folk wisdom inside and out but has less ability to apply it appropriately than a wooden stump. If Wisdom were common sense then a mob of peasants would have a higher wisdom score than the sum of their parts – but a mob earns its name through a lack of wisdom, not its opposite. That leaves intuition and willpower – which can be rephrased, ‘the character’s ability to guess’ and ‘stubborness’, respectively. But the system uses unskilled die rolls for the ability to guess, and stubbornness is considered an aspect of personality more than a game mechanic.

Certainly, Wisdom can be interpreted as willpower, and the specific value then interpreted in different ways to suit the character, as was done above for Intelligence and the different Evil alignments. But Wisdom needs to be more than just Willpower.

Because Wisdom is the dominant game characteristic of Clerics, some attempt has been made, from time to time, to define it in terms of the characters ability to understand the Will Of The Gods and The Nature Of Divinity and so on. But where does that leave Athiests? Even extending this definition to cover the more philosophic perspective of Druids seems a stretch.

Others have attempted to look over the list of skills that are based on Wisdom in order to discern a common pattern. Heal, Listen, Profession, Sense Motive, Spot, and Survival: what does this collection suggest? The common element seems to be the capacity to interact with the world as it really is without intellectual analysis.

But, while that is a quite servicable definition in most campaigns, even covering the reasons why it should be the dominant characteristic of Clerics in a world where the Gods are real, it doesn’t quite fit Shards Of Divinity, where the majority don’t worship the Gods.

Hold up – there’s a difference between Worship,/em> and Believe In. If the Gods are defined as natural phenomena, no more to be worshipped than the sunrise or a storm at sea, then our definition still fits.

Wisdom is defined in Shards Of Divinity as the ability to react and interact with natural phenomena without intellectual analysis.

It has been suggested on various bulletin boards that a Wise character would never be of Evil Alignment, because cooperation gets better results (and is therefore a wiser course of action); and because Wise characters would know that the Gods oppose the Evil of Demons and Devils, and usually win. Unless you come from a world where good doesn’t always win, or is (at best) less clear-cut than the usual definitions, and where the Gods are not considered Divine, just Powerful, by a significant proportion of the population. Hey – that describes the Shared Kingdoms to a ‘T’!

The Shared Kingdoms is the political authority within the campaign. Nominally a democracy. But that’s a whole other discussion for some other time and place.

Wisdom is therefore no barrier to playing an Evil Character.

Article Conclusion

So that’s my basic recipe for an “Evil” campaign. It’s not a very pleasant place, and you can often feel like donating to charity to cleanse yourself after GMing it for a while. But there are some serious philosophical questions lurking in the tall grass, questions that (in due course, and if all goes according to plan) will eventually smack the PCs around the head and demand to be answered – choices of action, in other words. There won’t be any right answers or wrong answers, of course – just consequences for the characters.

Series Conclusion

I hope that this Focus On Alignment has given you the raw materials to ponder the role of alignment in your campaigns; there is nothing wrong, per se, with Garry’s answer. Or with my techniques of relabelling and/or redefining. Or even, if it’s so inherantly bound to your campaign, for staying with the existing and default system.

A simple alignment structure doesn’t have to imply a simple moral or ethical structure. The absence of an alignment structure doesn’t necessarily enhance a moral or ethical structure. Make the choice that’s right for your game – but don’t just choose what’s in the books because it’s what is in the books. Think about the question, and the implications, and Then decide.

Riddleport and the Cypher Gate

How does a mere mage survive in the world’s most infamous pirate’s den? And how does a leader of mages protect himself from the incredible powers his followers might weild against him?

Here are a few of my thought processes behind a faction in my new D&D campaign. I thought you might be interested in some of the ideas. Comments and ideas of your own are welcome in the comments section.

A note to my players: spoilers follow, please stop reading.

My group soon begins playing the Pathfinder RPG in a new campaign with first level characters. The campaign is still in the early stages of planning – it doesn’t even have a name yet – but a few things are developing.

Order of Cyphers

One such thing is the local mage’s guild, The Order of Cyphers. I’m using Riddleport as the primary setting: a pirate town being slowly gentrified by an influx of scholars and merchants. I’m changing a lot of Paizo’s Riddleport, and that includes the mage’s guild.

The Order of Cyphers is named after a massive stone arch that spans the entrance to the city’s harbour. The arch is covered in ancient glyphs that no one can decode. Many think great and possibly terrible knowledge lies behind the glyphs, thus attracting magi from around the world to study and try to understand the tantalizing runes.

Syzzinar the Schemer

The enigmatic Syzzinar leads the guild and he is the most powerful of the eight crime lords who rule Riddleport, under the Overlord. None of the other faction bosses realize Syzzinar’s power, which is the way the near-epic magus wants it.

Syzzinar came to Riddleport as a prisoner nearly 100 years ago. His useful magic skills kept him in chains for a decade. Finally he gained the acumen necessary to slay his captain and sink his boat. He did this just as the ship was out of the harbour and out of sight of Riddleport. He flew back to the town under disguise and started a new life.

Crowdsourcing research

He began by studying the runes on the arch, certain some magical revelation lay behind the strange shapes. After 20 years he gave up and developed a new strategy. 100 heads are better than one, right?

Syzzinar started spreading rumours of wild and incredible knowledge that lay encoded in the runes. Riddleport at that time was infamous for being purely a pirate haven and a deadly place if you did not follow the way of the sea. Woven into his rumours was news of a new scholar’s guild that offered food, lodging, and most important, protection to all who came to study the arch. Even the name of the guild was designed to lure mages – the Order of Cyphers.

As magi warily trickled in from nearby cities, Syzzinar met each visitor with an invitation to join the Order, the only safe place in the city for the learned. The annual dues were steep, but magi come by coin easily.

Handling the Overlord like a frog in hot water

The crafty mage guild leader approached the Overlord in those long-gone days with hefty portions of guild fees collected to keep the guild safe from powerful pirate captains and their crews. Syzzinar knew the guild’s power would grow over time, and indeed it did, which allowed him to slowly cut back payments and keep more for himself. Overlords over the years were hesitant to anger a guild of wizards and settled for a slight reduction every couple of years. Just as a frog in slowly heated water will not hop out and will boil to death, so too did Overlords back away from confrontation and let Syzzinar gain ever increasing power and boons.

Keeping the mages distracted and under his control

With the problem of protection from pirates dealt with, Syzzinar set about tackling another tricky issue. How does one keep control of a group of mages, who if they joined together could easily wrest control from him at any time? Even in those early days, the leader recognized this grave threat to his position.

His solution was the Cypher Gate – the stone arch with the glyphs. By attracting only those magi interested in peaceful study and investigation he could keep them protected – and distracted. Alpha types were rooted out and their bodies thrown into the harbour. Syzzinar successfully deflected blame of these murders to one pirate captain or another, and in more recent years, to one crime lord or another. This further kept his flock docile and appreciative of The Order’s protection.

A quiet life of crime and politics

During the past eighty years, Syzzinar has followed all research very carefully. Spies make certain members do not keep secrets for long. He sits back and lets his members do all the pondering, reading, experimentation, and theorizing. He knows his unwitting 100+ member research group will soon unlock the riddle of the Cyphergate, and he’ll be there to seize the answer and get all its power for himself.

Meantime, he leads a quiet life of crime, leveraging the magic abiliites of guild members to offer services to Riddleport’s citizens as well as extort information and wealth from the minions of the other seven crime lords.

The Overlord bides and plots

The Overlord is scared of The Order, but he does not have enough power to intervene directly, nor can he coerce any of the other crime lords to act against the smug magi leader. Something must be done though, and soon, before Syzzinar is in such a position to sieze the title of Overlord for himself.

Thoughts? Comments? One thing I’m noodling on is that aside from his troublesome start, Syzzinar has not had much conflict in the past 80 years. His story needs some setbacks, and perhaps an arch nemesis.

In part one of this 5-part examination, we presented a guest article by Garry Stahl, “The Conundrum Of Alignment”. In Part two, “A Neccessary Evil?”, I discussed the justification for alignment being part of the rules, looked at the historical precedent for oversimplified moral arguements, and concluded that the real problem with alignment was misuse attributable to the judgemental and morally-extremist labels that had been used. In this part of the series, I examine the other side of the coin, then re-examine whether or not alignment really should be part of the game. I’ll then offer alternative ways of using the Mechanics of Alignment to satisfy both sides of the question, and transform alignment into a tool for characterisation, for the generation of scenarios, and even of whole campaigns. In Parts 4 and 5, I’ll share some ways to use those mechanics to enhance your games by giving some examples from my own campaigns.

Counterpoint: Complex Morality oversimplified

In touching on the historical foundations of an alignment system, I showed that oversimplified moral positions are more historically accurate than a complex moral code better suited to modern times. There are good reasons for this; first, moral behaviour was often linked to acceptance and protection of authority, and second, the lack of education required a simplification of the issues.

If it is accepted that Monarchs rule by Divine Right, then it must be accepted that moral behaviour requires obediance and loyalty to the Monarch. It was therefore in the interests of the authorities to simplify moral questions – in theory, the Monarch shoulders the burdons of deciding what is right and proper. Since no confusion can be permitted, lest the authority of the Monarch be called into question, definitions of what is moral must be simplified to the point of absurdity to ensure that they can be unhesitatingly applied in all situations.

Similarly, much of what little education existed in the Middle Ages was in the hands of the clergy, because they were the most learned people available to teach. Of course, as the moral guides and guardians of society, they were hardly going to instill doubts about the status quo in people, or encourage indeoendant thinking! On the contrary, doctrine was inherantly simplistic, and has stayed so ever since – so much so that many now feel that the churches have lost touch with modern thinking.

Nor are these the only forces at work that will tend, even in a fantasy campaign, to oversimplify complicated moral questions, just as they have throughout history. War has already been identified as a common cause of such oversimplification; another which has been a factor throughout human history has been religious intolerance.

There are differences between an authentic medieval society and that of a game, but enough of the fundamentals remain consistant between the two that it must be expected that at least some of the authority figures, if not all of them, will oversimplify complex moral issues.

Extremist Morality in a Gaming context

None of this is necessarily a bad thing within a game. An oversimplified moral structure makes the campaign background more accessable, and more relevant, to the Players, who will often find it easier to identify with. In games with children, as discussed last time, these things should be kept fairly simple; but in adult games, an excessively-simplified moral structure is an open invitation to explore moral questions and issues that would otherwise be too serious or potentially offensive.

There are some issues that, historically, have been moral according to the accepted morals of the time and place, but have since become moral anathema according to accepted wisdom. I sometimes call these issues Moral Chameleons. By linking a fantasy race or subculture to one of the key roles in these issues, the questions can be asked in a whole new context. Below, I’ve listed seven of these evergreen Moral Chameleons, but to some extent, any moral question can be used in this way.

Moral chameleon issue #1: Slavery
An old favorite with so many possibilities that not even in 29 years gaming have I explored them all. Is it wrong to enslave Machines? How about zombies? Demons? Is it wrong to liberate enslaved demons? Where does slavery end and social symbiosis start? These suggestions just scratch the surface…

Moral chameleon issue #2: The Crusades
If you accept the moral authority of a religion – any religion – then you are honour-bound to support that church’s attempts to educate the heathens – no matter what it takes… is the same true of an economic principle? How about polluting industries which harm a neighbouring country – is the victim entitled to invade the offender? Even the US-Soviet cold war can be interpreted as falling into this category, as can the Korean and Vietnam wars – none of which ever caused any controversy, did they?

Moral chameleon issue #3: The Inquisition
This evergreen could be considered the internal equivalent of the Crusades. How far is an organisation – be it religious, civil, or social – entitled to go to protect itself from internal corruption? When ‘real’ demons and devils are involved? If the Inquisition is merely searching out human fallability and doubt, you get a very different answer to that which results if they are engaged in a life-and-death struggle with a real enemy.

Moral chameleon issue #4: Loki
Norse mythology describes Loki as a mischief-maker, playing pranks with no regard for the consequences; when the chips are down, he usually comes up with some way to atone. Yet, during Ragnerok, he is counted amongst the enemies of the Aesir – without explanation. Stephen Brust explored a similar issue in his novel, ‘To Reign In Hell’, which contains the wonderful quote from the author in it’s back cover blurb, “From all of my readings on the revolt of the Angels, two things are clear: God is omnipotent, and Satan is not a fool. There seems to be a contradiction here…” Any anti-hero can be considered in the same light, and raises many of the same questions about the fundamental nature of evil, and evil acts.

Moral chameleon issue #5: Weapons Of Mass Destruction
Many countries have accused the US of hypocrasy over it’s political position on Weapons of Mass Destruction. The existance – or even the possibility – of such weapons always brings moral questions with it in an overhead compartment. “Are we justified in having these weapons? Are we justified in using them? How much is a victory worth, not just in the short-term, but centuries or millennia from now?”

Moral chameleon issue #6: Freedom Fighters
It has often been said that one man’s revolutionary is another man’s Freedom Fighter, and the questions of justification, and indirect warfare, always bear inspection. Is a violent and murderous campaign of liberation justifiable against an oppressive conqueror? How about a flawed but well-meaning government? Or one intent on acts of Genocide for what it considers the greater good? Robin Hood, the French Resistance, the IRA, Al Quida? Are there moral differences, and if so, what are they?

Moral chameleon issue #7: Prejudice (Racial or Class)
And, of course, there is this old favorite. Every case of opposition to racial or class prejudice rests on the assumption of equality – but in a fantasy campaign, that is not necessarily the case. Is prejudice justifiable against a superior species that would otherwise assume a position of dominance? How about against a species that considers your species as a food source, or that does not consider your species to be sentient?

Philosophers can spend decades wrestling with these thorny issues. Expecting to resolve them in a roleplaying game is going too far – but putting PCs into a position where they have to decide for themselves what is right, then justify that decision and wear the consequences, can be interesting, entertaining, and enlightening, for all concerned.

Alignment: Unneccessary?

And so we come to the crux of the matter: no matter how necessary it is for it to be part of the rules, is alignment really necessary in a campaign?

The answer is clearly no; Garry’s Campaigns stand as demonstration that D&D can be run without alignment, and in comparison to a campaign in which Alignment is misused, that might even be a beneficial step. I can agree with Garry that much, at least.

But I have to ask: is getting rid of Alignment a better solution than adapting the game mechanisms to benefit the campaign instead of harming it? You certainly couldn’t call Garry’s solution taking the easy way out; he describes very clearly the depth to which it is integrated within the system. I remain unconvinced, especially since the alternative is relatively easy and is profoundly beneficial to the campaign.

Absolutism: Alignment is not an excuse

I want to digress for a moment, at this point, to agree with something that Garry implied in one of his reasons for removing Alignment, and which I have described as an abuse of the Alignment subsystem.

One of the most common fallacies is that alignment dictates what actions are acceptable roleplay for a character who has been labelled and categorised into one of the nine defined archetypes. I consider that putting the cart well and truly ahead of the horse. Alignments should be a tool to help classify what attitudes the character will find acceptable – a subtle but profound difference.

The first mandates strict accordance with the most absolute and extremist interpretation of behavioural norms; the other treats alignment as an overall summary of the type of person the character wants to be, or tries to be. The reasons for that objective, and how well the character lives up to it, and where he fails to measure up, and where he perceives that he fails to measure up, are the things that distinguish one person from another.

Some classes have alignment requirements, not to enforce some narrow-minded zealotry that constricts and constrains and stultifies roleplay, but because that group likes their members to have a particular perspective or attitude, because that is what they perceive the Class as representing – an ideal, not a recruiting parameter. It’s all in-game, not a subjective reality. Within those limits, anything is fair game. The man who will help a friend in trouble, who hates lying because he’s bad at it, who hates being lied to because he’s paranoid, who attacks those he considers direct threats to his race and way of life, the Klansman – he’s Lawful Good. And so is the man who works hard, gives to charity, goes to church on Sundays, obeys every law and every commandment, and tries to arrest the first man if that’s the responsibility he has accepted.

Because Absolutism is unrealistic. Angels and Devils might be absolutes, but people are… “fuzzy”, when it comes to alignment. Worse, absolutism limits the amount of fun and interest that a game can contain. That’s not to say that there aren’t good people and bad people and generous people and greedy people – there are. But good people are just as capable of committing atrocities if they are convinced that it serves the greater good.

Alignment should NEVER be a straightjacket to characterisation. I prefer to treat it as a tool, like a sharp knife – useful, but dangerous if mishandled.

So how should it be employed, in my opinion? Pay attention, folks, because this is what this whole article has been building towards…

Alignment as a Campaign Tool

The first thing that has to be done is to recognise that the labels given to the existing alignments are prejudicial and biased, and that they will need to be replaced. That sweeps away all the fluff and endless debate and gets down to brass tacks. The second step is to determine exactly what it means to “have” or “be” a particular alignment.

By adopting this position, however, we gain an additional benefit: it means that the interpretation of alignment can be tailored to fit, and contribute to, each individual campaign, reinforcing key conceptual elements. These definitions then flow through to the different means of scaling alignment – to governments, and to races, and so on – to individually tailor every encounter, in a subtle but sometimes profound manner, to that campaign. They define exactly what it means when a character casts “Detect Evil”.

My early interpretation: The Legislative (In-Game) Approach
My first campaign was very much created from a pro-Lawful-Good approach (I had not yet realised the need to alter the alignment labels), making it very traditional in many ways. Where it differed from the abusive approaches I had seen other GMs adopt was that I stated up front that these measured attitudes to authority and civic responsibility and, in general, to the laws of the land. Immediatly, this transformed the alignment definitions from absolutes to relative values, and permitted conflicts between characters who felt equally passionately that different approaches to the Kingdom’s problems were in “the people’s best interests”. By instinct or luck, I had managed to avoid the alignment quagmire.

What’s more, I also specified that Paladins did not see the world as relative values, but as extremes – though they were able to tolerate, to a personal degree, the foibles of others; while absolutism was a purity of purpose that clerics aspired to but rarely achieved. The players in question had great fun taking these cues and integrating them into their roleplay – arguing with each other about minitia, the priest talking a hard line about abstemption but being the first to persuade the Paladin to forgive the foibles of the weak every time one of the other characters did something to offend his delicate sensibilities. At the same time, the Paladin was the backbone and stiff upper lip of the party, the glue that held them together anytime things became difficult – even when everybody and everything that he respected was revealed to be a sham, a corrupt shell; that only fueled his zeal to restore what he percieved as the tarnished honor of his Order.

The Third Axis: Intensity Of Belief
The other thing that I did was to postulate that an extreme position on the alignment chart reflected extremity of objectives, not strength of convictions. Most alignment maps equate the two; I put intensity of belief on a third axis, at right angles to the other two. That meant that a character could be Lawful Good in his convictions, but extremely morally weak, forever failing and repenting. The overall shape was that of an inverted cone (following the logic that the weaker a character’s morality was, the more ‘beige neutral’ they were; alignment boundaries descended vertically, and simple 3D geometry defined relationship strengths in terms of alliance and antagonism.

It also meant that the closer one came to neutral, the easier it was to slip off the peak to one side or another and incur an alignment shift.

All this proved to be more work than necessary, but it remains an elementary example of the type of Alignment treatment that I am advocating. Complex morality and moral questions and rich characterisation are not excluded by a correctly-utilised alignment system.

Alignment as motivation not control
None of this works if alignments represent totally dogmatic perspectives, in other words if they are used to control or restrict the PCs interpretation of their character’s behaviour under the circumstances present within the campaign. This usage of the alignment infrastructure of the rules requires that the PCs (and NPCs from the available player-races) have free will; this is about the character’s philosophy and personal ambitions of self-improvement, not about telling characters how they should or would act. When the third axis was included, this could be taken as read, especially if the real extremes were restricted to specific NPC archetypes – Gods and Devils and other supernatural creatures; but without it, it needs to be spelt out.

A character’s ideals are described by their alignment; how closely they live according to those ideals is an entirely seperate question. But deviate from your ideals too much or too often, and your ideals themselves become compromised – and the result is an alignment shift.

Reinventing the Labels

So, let’s take a look at reinventing the alignment labels and how that can work. I’m providing two examples for each alignment axis, but thought I’d talk about some general principles first.

One axis will always point toward some behavioural trait that is considered moral, while the other will point towards the opposite trait. The first will be the group that includes celestials and other angelic beings, while the latter will include demons and devils.

The complimentary axis will point toward a different behavioural trait that is usually considered desirable by some and the opposite end will point toward its antithesis. The difference between these two behavioural traits will define the “racial” personality differences between “Demons” and “Devils”.

The position along either axis will define the ratios of one quality to the other in the personality of the being, but not the intensity or reliability of those personality traits, which will differ from character to character.

Reinventing the Labels – “Good Vs Evil”: Altruism vs Selfishness
These are my standard substitutions for these inherantly biased and judgemental labels. Altriusm implies a level of generosity, willingness to put others ahead of yourself, etc, while it’s opposite places the individual ahead of the group. One interesting campaign premise inverts these with respect to reality but not with respect to social beliefs. The result is a situation in which the “beautiful” have seduced society for their own benefit, while those who want to liberate society (and themselves) are the downtrodden exiles of the angels, cursed and corrupted to render them abhorrent to “civilized” people. PCs will start off with the normal social beliefs, but questions will start to add up, eg an angel incinerating a helpless cult leader captured by the PCs just as he was about to start answering questions about his recent activities.

Reinventing the Labels – “Good Vs Evil”: Honour vs Expediency
Another option that I’m saving for a future campaign. This one is interesting because the two extremes don’t quite mean the same thing, and imply different aspects of their extreme opposite; Honour vs Dishonour, and the long view as opposed to a short-term advantage. These in turn offer differently-flavoured interpretations of Intelligence – Logic vs Intuition. The result is a blending of Star Wars (‘The quick and easy path leads to the Dark Side’) and Star Trek. It also means that these are not necessarily antagonistic qualities; if a combination of the two can be focussed on a problem, it could prove more effective than either on their own – or, if the two compete and interfere, it could conceivably be worse. The campaign, if and when it eventually happens, will also reflect these disparate principles – every time someone of the Honour Alignment goes for the Quick solution instead of the long view, things will start going wrong for them (using rules for bad luck), and vice-versa for the Expedient. The bad guys will be about instinct and inflicting maximum damage Right Now to the opposition, and will probably start of in the superior position – The Empire is in charge, not the Rebellion. There are still many details to be worked out, but I have years!

Reinventing the Labels – “Law vs Chaos”: Pattern & Ritual (aka ‘Order’) vs Intuition & Instinct (aka Chaos)
If it weren’t for the overlap in implied meanings, I might very well have used this combination for the complimentary alignment axis of the “Evil Empire” campaign discussed in the previous paragraph. I might still use it, but that implies a trend on the extremes of this axis to coincide with those of the previous axis – Expediant characters would trend toward Intuition and Instinct and away from Pattern and Ritual – it’s as though the two weren’t at right angles, or perhaps that these axes aren’t straight lines. But I’m not convinced that, as a combination of complimentary axes, these will accommodate satisfactory play well.

Taking this axis on it’s own merits, it suggests a dichotomy of the arcane – the difference between Wizardry and Sorcery. It also suggests a more regimented government and social structure (Guilds, Nobility, etc) vs a more anarchic state (Democratic?) This would work well as a conflict not between Heaven and Hell, but between D&D Devils and Demons. Or perhaps between Dragons and Demons, that would be fun! With the PCs, of course, opposing both, and caught in the middle.

Reinventing the Labels – “Law vs Chaos”: Protectionism vs Independance
I was going to use “Socially-acceptable Faith vs Agnosticism & Heathen Beleifs”, which is the Law/Chaos axis used in my Fumanor campaigns, and which is dominant over the Altruism vs Selfishness axis, but instead I decided at the last minute to illustrate a point by taking a completely different moral dichotomy, one that is only vaguely related to “Law vs Chaos”. Protectionism is about taking the weight of the world from the shoulders of those not prepared to bear it – wrapping the mortals in cotton wool and never letting them get hurt too badly, save for the occasional demonstration of ‘tough love’, while it’s counterpart is about pushing the kiddies out of the nest and forcing them to stand on their own two feet as quickly as possible, regardless of how harsh and callous the results might be. You could even describe them as Maternal vs Paternal, in some respects. To make matters interesting, the absence of free will implied by Protectionism makes it suitable for a repressive, controlled, and manipulative society – Fascism or the old Soviet political system. This would make the Demons the good guys and the Devils the bad – which is so similar in concept that this might even be complimentary if these replaced the “Good/Evil” axis.

Alignment as a tool for characterisation & scenario development

Just as Alignment can be used as a tool for the generation of campaigns, or for the translation of abstract campaign concepts into behavioural influances, so it can be used as a tool for characterisation. The GM should be able to pick a topic, any topic, of importance to the characters, and lay out an alignment axis between the two extreme perspectives. The characters each then have a choice: their position on that axis can either be informed by their previously-defined alignment, or can be in contrast to it. Whenever I do this, I like to put some variation on the question on the other axis. Deciding these issues helps form a more concrete picture of the character and his personality.

Instead of generating cardboard cutouts, alignment is suddenly transformed into a tool for the generation of complex personalities!

Greed: Debts and Promises
For example, let’s look at one of the question of Greed. As I described earlier, I use Selfishness instead of the term “Evil” (though Altruistic Characters may describe the actions of extremely Selfish characters as “Evil,” reflecting a values judgement by their characters). One aspect of Selfishness that the PCs are sure to encounter is the phenomenon of Greed, which can be examined from two perspectives: How the character reacts to debts he owes, and how he reacts to debts owed him, each of which makes a perfectly acceptable Issue Axis for characterisation purposes.

The Issues Axes might look like this:

Now, it might be that an Altruistic character – “Lawful Good” in the judgemental base system – would automatically trend towards the top point, indicating a balanced perspective in terms of chasing what is owed and letting those who claim not to be able to pay have “more time” endlessly – but, apon closer inspection, and operating under the theory that any character can be flawed and imperfect, absolutely ANY of these are compatable with an Altruistic perspective. If the player simply puts an “X” somewhere on the Issue Axis for where the character is – and a circle for where he thinks the character WANTS to be, or thinks he should be – suddenly, we have an interesting character that’s got a story to tell, with opinions that the GM can play on with future encounters, and a direction of growth. What’s more, there can be various links formed between the two axes as ’cause and effect’ – for example, the character might wish to pay his debts promptly, but because he’s an ‘Easy Touch’, he never has the money to do so. That places two of the character’s ideals in conflict – always meaty for roleplaying purposes. Does he really have to put that widow who can’t pay the rent out on the street?

At the same time, the opposite alignment – Selfish – can apply equally to a hard-nosed businessman, who agressively chases what he is owed and always pays his debts promptly – or to a slumlord, who chases what’s coming to him but pays out as little as possible, as infrequently as possible. A Selfish character can even justify being an “Easy Touch” if he then goes looking for ways to exploit the situation to his own advantage – one token of generosity makes a formidible excuse for total ruthlessness in other aspects of his life. Remember the MASH episode where Charles (the blueblood) gives a gift of expensive food to the Orphanage – a family tradition – only to be distressed when they sell it for blankets?

Make a new Issue map every time a new issue is encountered
A series of issue maps is a great way of summarising personality aspects. They can make it easier for the player to get in character, to be consistant, to formulate character goals and idiosyncrosies. They can also be a source of inter-party friction between characters that’s both fun and interesting to roleplay, and the GM can use them as a guage to the character’s involvement in the scenarios he runs; if a character can go a full level without adding one, or altering an existing one, it’s a pretty good sign that the character would be pretty blase about the adventures he’s been on lately – an attitude that might also be reflected in how much the player is enjoying himself.

I’ve generated a free 1-page PDF suitable for characters to log issue maps for their characters, or you can devise your own. You can download the colour version or a black-and-white version. To use the issue map, give a copy to each of the PCs (and any key NPCs that are with them) as an adjunct to their character sheets. Each time they confront a moral or social issue, the operator of the character decides whether or not the character cares about the issue, chooses labels accordingly, marks on the resulting alignment chart where his character stands and where he thinks he should stand, and makes any explanatory notes that are needed. It takes only ten or fifteen seconds unless the character (or the operator) is “undecided” – in which case he can play it that way, and discuss the issue from his character’s point of view either later, or even in character within the game. It’s certainly a more productive use of time than the usual sort of side chatter that occurs when play slows down, and it’s even fairly reasonable that the subject would come up around the campfire.

Alignment Scaling

At long last, we’re on the home straight and sprinting for the finish line. The next item on my topic list is the question of scaling. Garry contends that alignment doesn’t scale; I concede that if any sort of absolutist interpretation is used, there are too many disparate componants to a complex definition, and too many individuals with non-conformist opinions, for it scale properly – but that only makes alignment more valuable as a tool when the asolutist, all-inclusive interpretations are rejected.

Once the labels provided by the system have been replaced with something more appropriate and more useful, the issues sheet can be used by the GM as a worksheet to define a more complex, realistic, and satisfying system that absolutely scales from the individual up to the collective – and back down again.

Take an issues sheet, label the first alignment box according to the standard alignment definitions you have defined for within the campaign and call it “overall attitudes”. You can then use the others to define the stances of specific subsectors of the population, where these are different from the “accepted standard”; you can use them to define attitudes on specific issues confronting the society; you can even define, seperately and side-by-side for comparison, “official policy”, “public opinion”, and even specific population segments with a different attitude.

To scale up from an individual, you simply define how that individual stands out from the general society in opinions and character, and that specifies which of the general attitudes that the individual reflects and which attitudes are different – the referee then can specify the prevailing opinions, and then summarise the bottom line.

To scale down from a society, the operator makes the same decisions: On what subjects does he disagree? On what subjects does he agree, but fails to live up to the ideal?

The same technique applies when scaling up from a local society to a racial profile, or vice-versa. It turned a lot of heads when I defined Orcs as being essentially altruistic in nature in Fumanor, but from their racial perspective, they were; the ‘objectionable’ things that the race had done within the game were all acts committed in furtherance of their race’s collective survival and prosperity. But they did not respect the common social opinion, and the common social opinion did not respect their opinion – they were a counterculture with a different set of values to the mainstream, but the typical Orc was no more “evil” than the typical Paladin. Individuals, of course, were a completely different question.

Detection and Alignment Languages

Detection was always a thorny issue, dependant on the definitions employed for the different axial traits of the alignment system, until a few distinctions were made. Arcane Magic, for example, detects alignment in terms of recent actions in my campaigns, while Clerical Magic is more about fundamental attitudes. With the liberation of the system from the straightjacket of alignment controlling behaviour instead of reflecting it, and the rejection of the inherantly biased and judgemental labels and definitions provided by the core rules, the detection systems are also liberated to reflect the natures of the techniques and purposes being employed to detect the alignment.

At the same time, the protection spells, and all other aspects of alignment interaction with the rules, also assume subtly-different flavours. If you use the label “Altruism” instead of the judgemental “Good”, then an attack does “+2 vs altruism” instead of “+2 vs good”; a magic circle might be a “protection vs altruism” instead of a “protection vs good”. The use and desireability of these effects by characters changes, as does the implications of casting them, and the dangers of using them as a guide to intentions or actions that can be expected. Instead of telling characters what the subjects are going to do, they give clues – but characters remain individuals. That means that only the characters most prone to extremist perspectives are likely to actually utilise these spells except under unusual circumstances.

Conclusion – for now

So there it is – a method of transforming alignment from a binding restriction to a tool that is so valuable that you will wonder where it’s been all this time.

In part 4 of this series, to be posted next week, I will discuss a more advanced technique to give an even more robust political infrastructure to any organisation in “Flavours Of Neutrality”, while part 5 (to be posted at the same time) will offer for consideration an opposing perspective to the traditional D&D labels in “Dark Shadows”.

Garry’s Article, The Conundrum Of Alignment, which appears as part one of this series, raised some excellent points. I agree with many of them, and felt that further discussion – and an alternative point of view – was merited, since I had reached radically different conclusions from much the same foundations. In parts 2 & 3 of this series, I’ll offer a rebuttal of sorts; and in parts 4 and 5, I’ll share with you some new ways to use alignment to enhance your games that I have derived from the arguements and logic of the earlier parts.

Alignment – A much-abused Tool

Alignment must be one of the most abused and misunderstood tools in the armoury of any campaign.

To some extent, that’s the fault of the game authors, who describe alignments For PCs in terms of fundamentalist absolutism – the “Fischer-Price” of ethical systems, as Garry puts it – and then broaden these definitions to ascribe the same absolutist perspectives to governments, nations, races, and organisations of all kinds. Clearly, absolutism and alignment scaling are subjects that we’ll need to examine.

And to some extent, this is the fault of GMs who want to read too much into alignment, oversimplifying complex moral and ethical questions into cliches, and teaching bad habits to their players; interpretation is another topic that has to be touched on, however boring it may be to those who have read endless debates on the subject in the past (sorry, Johnn).

And, in part, it’s the fault of hack-and-slash players who use alignment as an excuse for antisocial and amoral behaviour on the part of their characters. And it’s partly the fault of roleplayers who use their character’s alignment as an unlimited behavioral credit card and consider it good roleplaying, and GMs who applaud and reward this behaviour. Absolutely, the use of alignment as a characterisation and roleplaying tool are topics that need to be examined.

But mostly, the responsible parties are audiance-targetted marketing and paternalistic attitudes.

It is my contention that Garry’s article does an excellent job of enunciating many of the abuses that are possible with the D&D morals system called “Alignment”, but it blames the tools and not the workmen abusing those tools. I’ll start this reply by looking at why Alignment should be in the game at all.

All audiances are not the same

Adult games can contain adult concepts, deep and profound questions of morality and ambiguities of characterisation and discussions of Spirituality vs Doctrine; they can be ethically, intellectually, culturally, spiritually, and philosophically stimulating and challenging. Some people (and I’m one of them) find this use of the gaming vehicle to be fascinating and loads of fun.

Other people don’t enjoy this sort of thing, or aren’t sufficiently mature to be able to comprehend the issues, or oppose, for personal reasons, challenges to their beliefs in some of these arenas. I refer the reader to the discussion on Good People in the comments to
“Networks Of NPCs”, and to my post from earlier this year, “Moral Qualms On The Richter Scale”.

D&D, like any roleplaying game, has to appeal to all of these people; it has to be as capable of over-simplistic moral generalisation as any kids’ comic book in order to be considered acceptable to a juvenile market. And it has to be capable of supporting deep philosophical debates and moral conundrums in order to appeal to people like Garry and I. And it has to be capable of all the levels in between.

Alignment and Children
Children pose a special problem for RPGs, as intimated above. Would you run a game for children with the same moral complexities as one intended for adult participation? How about a game run to appeal to a beer-and-pretzels (I think that may misspelt, sorry) football crowd?

While RPGs can be used as an educational tool, introducing a child to concepts such as “a good person who has made a mistake” and “a bad person pretending to be a good person”, that sort of decision should be in the hands of the parents, and these ideas should be presented slowly and one at a time, with explanations, and the child given time to assimilate them. I’m talking about ages 6-10 here; with increasing age, you can get more sophisticated. Which is another way of saying that the younger your audiance, the more black-and-white you need your morality to be.

Now, D&D wasn’t designed with this target audiance in mind; it’s too complicated. The target demographic is everyone from 13 to 1300. So, with that wide a target audiance, how do you write your game?

Well, you can assume that the younger members will skip the bits that are too complicated; or you can assume that an older audiance can add as much nuance as they find necessary or desireable, and adopt the youngest target demographic as the default. This is a no-brainer, folks; any publisher will pick the latter course every day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

The target demographic at which the game is aimed makes a simplistic moral structure manditory, if you’re going to have one at all – and the themes of “Good Guys against Bad Guys” are far too ingrained in our cultural landscape to ignore, so there has to be SOME sort of moral structure included.

Alignment and Religion-based Intolerance
In the late 1970s and 1980s, RPGs came in for some serious attention from religious organisations who saw them as promoting witchcraft and devil worship and pagan gods and violence and heaven knows what else. Granting that most of these groups had the very best of intentions (at least until proven otherwise), RPGs (and D&D in particular, as the most popular game) had to defend themselves. One of the most potent weapons in our hobby’s arsenal was Alignment, which stressed and emphasised that there were moral absolutes, that Good was Good and Evil was Bad, and that there was no compromise possible between the two.

The forces of religion-based intolerance for RPGs made it inevitable that the morals system called alignment would not only be fundamental to the game, but that it would be extremely simplistic and generalised.

Alignment and The Media
And then there’s the sensationalist media, which climbed onto the bandwagon. If I’m cynical towards the mass media these days, it’s because I saw what passed for “balanced reporting” twenty-five years ago, and extrapolated from that example of sensationalist distortion, through others, to a general perception. It takes serious journalistic credibility to win my unvarnished respect these days (there have been a few who have done so), and there have been a number of media sources that still have not regained their credibility in my eyes.

Defusing the sensationalist media mandated that D&D, in particular, had an intrinsic but simplistic moral code built into the system. The alternative was the draconian self-censorship that was forced on the comics industry earlier in the twentieth century (The Comics Code Authority) – you can get a quick introduction to the subject at Wikipedia. More details can be obtained from various books on the subject available through Amazon, such as The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America.

What would you rather have: Alignment restrictions that GMs can ignore at will, or even remove completely (as Garry has done) or a Game with no Gods (disrespectful, pagan), undead, devils, demons, etc?

Alignment and Public Acceptability
Of course, the real targets of both sensationalist media and misinformed/intolerant religious organisations weren’t the gamers themselves, it was the general public. Little Johnny needed something with which to calm the anxieties of nervous parents and teachers who became concerned about all this talk of strange creatures and stranger rituals, or who bought the line that people were psychologically harmed to the point of being unable to distinguish fantasy from reality, and some fantasies are inherantly dangerous anyway… (don’t laugh – I heard those sentiments expressed on more than one occasion – about Rock & Roll, about Heavy Metal, about R-Rated movies, about Monster Movies, about Computer Games, and yes, about roleplaying, D&D in particular.

Once again, an alignment system becomes inevitable, and the more extremist it is, the better it suits application to these purposes.

So Alignment Is Inevitable?
Okay, so that’s all well-and-good for AD&D and original D&D before it, and maybe even Basic D&D after. But that was all thirty years ago, near enough as makes no difference; we live in a more enlightened age, right? Well, maybe not. Conspiracy Theories, Intelligent Design, Global Warming? The forces that assaulted the very concept of RPGs are still around, they’ve just found other targets – for now. Maybe some of the conspiracy theories are correct – there are conspiracies in the real world, after all. And maybe the theory of Intelligent Design is correct, but it’s not a science and shouldn’t be taught as one. And maybe global warming / climate change is real, but I’m not convinced – it all sounds too Chicken-Little-“The sky is falling” to me, and I’ve seen too many pronouncements about doom and gloom to take another without careful consideration. I don’t doubt anyone’s sincerity, but I’m certainly NOT convinced that the need for Alignment, as a defence, has gone away.

The Roots Of Alignment

So where did the alignment concept come from, anyway? The various factions and special interests and concerned citizens against which RPGs had to contend weren’t the reason it was created, they are merely the reasons why it should still be there.

Extremist Morality: Black Hats vs White Hats
I think that Alignment comes from the experiences and popular world-view that surrounded the creators as children, filtered through some fiction, and were originally included to define a morals system that didn’t fall in a heap over someone running someone else through with a sword. It was, in other words, a technique for describing an essentially medieval moral standard to a modern audiance.

Movies: Westerns & Cop Shows & Horror Movies
The earliest D&D rules essentially reflect a 1950s morality of absolute black hats and absolute white hats – a morality that persisted in most mass media throughout the 70s. Think back to the Westerns of the era – the stranger riding into town and being deputised? That’s the prototypical PC. Remember the Cop Shows on TV at the time? The bad guys always got caught and the good guys always won. Again, those are the PCs. And lastly, think of all those B-grade Horror/Monster flicks – with a very few exceptions, the same pattern repeats once again.

The reason is quite simple: the audiance identifies with the heroes, and wants them to win, because when they do, the audiance vicariously shares in the victory. This is exactly what the original D&D experience offered its players.

Society changes only slowly, but the representations of social attitudes are reflected in the mass media even more slowly (for the most part – there are exceptions). That’s the case purely because to have a mass market appeal, these representations generally have to target the lowest common denomenator, and that necessarily includes people whose attitudes are considered old-fashioned or behind-the-times.

D&D may not initially have been designed to appeal to a mass market (though AD&D certainly was designed to appeal to a niche within a mass market), but the contemporary mass media that the authors were exposed to nevertheless reflected the mass market’s attitudes, and these inevitably served as sources of inspiration to the creators.

Terrorism
You don’t have to look very far even in the modern world to find real-life examples of oversimplified morality standards. The most blatant such example over the last few years has been terrorism – which I am absolutely NOT going to defend. Despite that absolute, it must be acknowledged that there are genuine grievances and historical antagonisms that were the ultimate triggers for much of the hatred that finds expression through terrorism, and that some responses to terrorist behaviour can only be considered to have been as barbaric as the acts against which they are supposed to defend.

The Cold War & The War On Drugs
Before terrorism as the “ultimate evil”, the role of the archvillains of real life for much of Western Society were reserved for Communists and Drug Dealers. Both of these oversimplifed moral questions, and a lot of government policy was then grounded in those generalisations, both good and bad. Some of it we’re still dealing with. I’m not pro-communist; their system failed for a reason, it simply couldn’t compete over the long haul, and they did some pretty atrocious things (especially to their own citizens) along the way. Nor am I a defender of the drug Barons – but manditory minimum sentences are a lot more complicated subject of discussion – a discussion that you can’t have if you are painted as being “soft on crime” the minute you raise the subject.

WWII
And before the Communists were the Axis Powers. The fascist regimes committed acts that fully justified the role in which they were cast, but take a look at the newsreels and government statements of the era, such as the “Why We Fight” propaganda movies by Frank Capra that were shown to every soldier, and tell me they don’t oversimplify the question. Indeed, it wasn’t until Schindler’s List that there was any hint of a suggestion that some of the supposed Nazis could be heroic. That’s how ingrained that particular “Good Guys against Bad Guys” moral standard became – it lasted, unchallenged, long after the western world stopped applying it to the German, Italian, and Japanese peoples.

WWI
And before the Fascists were the Germans, once again, this time in the guise of Kaiser William II and his allies. As you can see, there is something of a theme developing here: enemies in War are usually the subjects of Moral Oversimplification in the real world, but there’s always someone, and you can keep listing them, one after another, until you reach the point where the American Revolutionaries fought “the hated redcoats” and beyond. What, then, is the likelyhood that the same practices will not be in force in whatever psuedo-historical era in which the D&D game is set?

Myth And Legend
The same is true for many of the myths and legends on which the game is founded. Consider, for example, the myriad versions of the tales of King Arthur and the round table. Can anyone deny that King Arthur is not the achetype apon which the Lawful Good Paladin is founded, and his arch-enemy, Morgaine Le Faye, is therefore the prototype of Evil? It’s the same old good-guys-vs-bad-‘guys’ plot foundation all over again.

Bibilical Influances
In fact, you can trace the concept of moral absolutism all the way back to the Bible. In comparison, most of the other early belief systems and associated mythologies – the Greek, Roman, and Norse, for example – did not have absolute good and evil.

I would suggest that far from being ‘unrealistic’, any game that did not posess an oversimplified moral structure is the game that is unrealistic, while games that DO have such a structure are more realistic – provided that these are explained properly and used properly by the GMs of the games in question.

‘Realism’ For A Modern Audiance

In fact, what Garry has labelled ‘realism’ is the imposition of a modern perspective on a game situation (and I do the same thing, so no criticism is intended). The oversimplified moral structures implied by the alignment system is, if anything, a compromise between a truly realistic depiction and a more realistic (by modern standards) morality analysis.

This is not a unique dilemna – any movie or television show or novel set in a ‘simpler age’ has to struggle with the same contradiction between the prevalant attitudes of the era and the lessons of sophistication and hindsight and cultural enlightenment that need to be respected in order to engage a modern audiance.

Take, for example, the profound changes with respect to racial equality that have entered the modern psyche over the last hundred years. In 1909, people would have been lynched for suggesting that a Black man could ever be US President – I don’t even think they had the Vote at that time in American history. Similarly, Gender equality was an issue which had barely taken central stage – Women had only recently been given the right to vote, and equality in the workplace wasn’t even an issue. That’s not to say that the attitudes of the era were right, just that those were were the attitudes of the era.

All this comes to a head when you consider roleplaying games designed to appeal to a modern audiance. AD&D, for example, gave female characters a lower Strength score than males, eventually sparking considerable debate, no matter how realistic it might have been. Perhaps if it gave them a commensurate increase in Charisma and Wisdom, this rules element would still be part of the game. D&D 3.0 was the first version of the game to do away with that institution, in a deliberate gesture towards sexual equality at the expense of the hard truth that females, in general, do not have the same physical strength as males.

Similarly, the respect with which Elves & Dwarves are treated by Humans (and have been in just about every edition that I can think of) is a modern attitude manifesting itself in contradiction to prevelant attitudes of the historical realities of the eras apon which the game setting was modelled.

Having conceded historical accuracy in favour of a more modern ‘realism’ in so many areas, the debate shifts to whether or not the game should abandon all pretence of historical referance and become wholly a modern expression of a fantasy world, or should some elements of historical accuracy be retained purely to make the game more ‘realistic’?

So profound is inherant contradiction that it is, in truth, the heart and soul of those endless debates about the signficance of this alignment or that alignment. It is the difficult choice between realistic characterisation vs a realistic historical basis – calling one solution more ‘realistic’ than the other is oversimplifying the arguement in exactly the same way that Alignment oversimplifies personal morality.

Labels are the tools of Bias

I have just one more point to make (before moving on to contradict myself in the next post of this series)!

Garry makes the point that “no sane person identifies themselves as ‘evil’.” I completely agree, but would ask exactly who it is that is indentifying themselves as ‘evil’? At worst, characters of evil alignment are stating that “narrow and blinkered minds, locked into biased perspectives, may label what I do as ‘evil'”. The rules system, and associated text, inherantly assume that the PCs will be “good guys” and not evil would-be world conquerers.

So much trouble has arisen – such as the debates that Garry seeks to avoid, and Johnn is tired of, over ‘evil’ vs ‘Evil’ – because the labels applied are absolutist and biased towards one particular side of the alignment equation. They aren’t couched in behavioural or characterisation terms, they are described in terms of moral judgement. This one fact, more than any other, is (in my opinion) responsible for more of the abuse and misuse of Alignment, and for Garry’s reasons for rejecting the system, and for the endless debates over trivia that miss the real point, than any other. It’s those labels that I do away with, and (where necessary), the descriptions that go with them.

The result is a system that makes complex characterisation easier and faster, and yet it still permits oversimplification back into a propaganda-oriented terminology by both sides of the moral question.

In part III of this massive multi-part series, I take another perspective on the whole issue, and discuss whether or not Alignment really IS unneccessary.

Johnn received this article submission for Roleplaying Tips, but it’s not a fit for the e-zine, which tries to be systemless as much as possible. He “didn’t read much of it because 30 years of alignment discussions puts this on my topics blacklist, even for personal reading (smiley).” So he asked me to take a look at it and consider whether or not it was suitable for the blog.

So here’s the result: A monster multi-part blog post on the subject of alignment in D&D. Starting with:

The Conundrum of Alignment

A guest article by Garry Stahl

I don’t like alignment, it bears repeating. What I don’t generally do is explain is why. I usually do not explain why because I use an authoritative tone of voice and peoples’ heads explode. If your head is so prone, wrap it in duct tape, here I go.

Forward

Yes, I understand the D&D alignment system. I have used it, I have read up on it and read many an article for and against. I have pursued an understanding of the alignment section in every edition of D&D from Zero to Fourth. To be perfectly clear, I do not speak from a point of ignorance. Understanding something does not require agreement with it as well.

One: Alignment causes contention in interpretation

The alignment system has been debated to death. The books can clarify and explain until the damn bovines are dust, never mind come home, it changes not in the least the fact that people will argue the meaning those nine little phrases, and argue and argue. In part, I drop alignment because it unhinges those expectations. By not using the loaded phrases to describe anything, I remove them from contention, and hopefully open people up to looking at my game as it is, not with the baggage they bring to it.

To clarify a point that has been brought up a number of times. Dropping alignment in total is not the job of the lazy DM. It requires a good deal of work to extract alignment from the rules of the game. First you have to replace it with something, an ethical and moral code or several. Second you have to remove it from spell effects and magic items, character classes and any other place it pops up. This was not done because I couldn’t be bothered to keep track of it. On the contrary. Doing nothing and leaving alignment in would have been less work, much less work.

Two: Alignment oversimplifies & confuses

Alignment is the Fisher-Price ethics system. Big blocks for little hands. Simple (except it is not, see above) and bright colors. But using alignment to make a more advanced moral and ethical system is like laying out a highly detailed model with those self-same Fisher-Price toys; you cannot do it. Sure those toys have their place, but it is not in a detailed model.

I have read article after article about how to make “real” politics work under alignment. Or how to inject “real” morals (“real” in quotes because we are discussing a game). How it IS possible to have conflict between two “Lawful Good” characters and not break alignment. Why is this even coming up? Anyone who has ever stood between a Baptist and a Catholic, or a Sunni and an Shiite, understands that conflict among even so closely related beliefs can arise. Conflict to the point of violence. Only the artificial construction of alignment makes this a question in the first place.

Alignment gets taken further into races and even entire nations. This does not work. While an inadequate Fisher-Price system for individuals, it just cracks into little pieces when you try to wrap an entire society around it. Alignment does not scale, either to finer and more detailed ethics or to larger social units. So you either have to work around it, awkwardly, like a dead elephant at a party, or ignore it at different scales. So why do you have it?

Then we have the issue of identification. I won’t even get into the First Edition bad idea of the decade of alignment languages. Which incidentally were too impolite to use, but you still had them – Cant for use at the local Lawful Evil club no doubt. Let us be frank – no sane person identifies themselves as ‘evil’. Everyone is right or justified in their own minds; even the worst of mass murderers has a rationalization for their deeds. Therefore a brotherhood of evil, or even good, is laughable. People will join the Rotary Club or a gang, but for the reasons of society or mutual protection, not to “do evil”. They might indeed be doing evil, but they will justify it to themselves and won’t by default cooperate with the next group of “evil doers” down the road.

The average person in the kind of subsistence society that D&D usually describes as the default are not interested in the finer points of some universal philosophy. They are concerned with how many sheep they have, or how good the crop is going to be; real issues that affect their lives.

Three: Alignment as a behavioural sledgehammer

Long ago (some two decades) I created detailed ethical and moral systems for my game. I came to the point of adding alignment, and realized it was putting lips on a chicken. You didn’t need it. I had just explained in black and white the ethics of the entire religion. I didn’t need the alignment.

By removing alignment wholesale We don’t get into fine debates about the true nature of “evil” verses “Evil”. (This is exactly the kind of argument I was talking about in point one.) You can’t detect alignment, there isn’t one. NPCs have to be dealt with on an “as we meet you” basis. The justifcation for razing an entire town because it was “evil” is gone.

Social consequences replace alignment deviation. If you walk through town kicking puppies you will become known as a puppy-kicker. Mothers will pull children off the street. Adult dogs will bark at you. Merchants will not serve you. Get bad enough and the law takes a hand. Ever wonder what happens to retired epic level adventurers? Why, they get a job as the town constable, that’s what. It keeps rowdy puppy-kicking, punk adventurers in line.

Alignment is not required “to keep players in line”. Frankly if that is what you are using it for, either find a new set of players or quit. Alignment as a behavioral hammer is one of the worst uses for this tool of dubious uses. It stifles role-play and character development. Forcing characters into their alignment mold and punishing any deviation is one of the prime causes for its elimination from my game.

Four: Theological Classes and the Detection of Alignment

What about Clerics and Paladins? Well, they get a gloss of their religion, its beliefs, commandments, and special rules for the order. Much better than a two word descriptive. Deviation as described is punished by the God in question.

Good and Evil? They exist, they can even be detected, but not unless they are very strong. Most mortal creatures will never detect as evil or good. They have choices. The teetotaling saint can become a wife-beater and thief. the wife-beater and thief can turn a new leaf and seek redemption, even become a saint. Choices. Simon McGee is not evil by the detects. He can mend his ways.

Those creatures that do show as good or evil are those without the choice to change. Devils, angels, those creatures that are what they are by nature. In addition those mortals that are strongly tied to a power that is one or the other will detect as such. Sell your soul to the Devil, yes you will detect as evil. Are you a sainted monk that can heal without spells? You will detect as good. These are mortals that have made their choice so definitely that change is impossible or at best highly unlikely.

So in my game anyone that detects as “evil”, really is. There is no “Lawful” or “Chaotic”. Those are philosophical statements, not a property of the universe.

For the last twenty years alignment has not been part of my game. The game has improved, not suffered.

Afterword: 4e

I read that Fourth Edition was going to change the alignment system. Indeed they did, for the slightly better, slightly. Fourth Edition alignment is, well stupider than every other version I have seen in anything labeled D&D. It is like taking one wheel off a car and declaring the new “design” “better”. Mind you, that is without redesigning the car to be a trike. I haven’t heard anyone that likes it from people that like alignment. Come on guys, if you going to remove the Law/Chaos axis, remove it, don’t cripple it and leave the beast to die. Never mind making it meaningless, but keeping it around. No one is held to anything anymore.

My rebuttal/discussion of Garry’s Article will commence in Part 2 of the series.

Session reminders increase game attendance

I realized recently my game announcements and reminders are underwhelming. I’m leaving opportunities to improve the game unfulfilled.

We play every other Thursday night. Games start at 6:30, we’re usually full-on by 7pm, then we wrap up between 11 and 11:30. We confirm the week of the game by email though, just in case schedules change.

Maintaining bi-weekly Thursdays makes things nice and predictable. I think when we all schedule things now there’s a reminder in the back of our heads to check if it’s a D&D Thursday before committing to another activity. That’s helps clear a lot of schedules and prevents double-bookings, which are two banes of getting regular games happening.

Following are a few tips on how to improve session reminders to get more attendees each game.

1. What changes from session to session?

Game sessions share a number of common traits. Note which traits tend to change for your group from session to session. Communicate all the changing session parameters well each time to avoid confusion, frustration, and worst of all, missing players.

Here’s an example list of what you might need to tell everyone before each game to get everything sorted out quick and easy:

• Session date:
• Start time:
• End time:
• Location:
• Commuting arrangements:
• Food/snack duties:
• Game played:

The last one, game played, is for groups who don’t lock in the game or campaign being played. Sometimes a group plays with multiple GMs, each with his own campaign, so game played would also tell people who’s GMing and what characters are needed.

My group plays my D&D game every session at my place. Except under the most unusual circumstances, these items don’t need to be in my game reminder emails. If something rarely changes, leave it out of your email. This makes the information smaller and easier to scan. If the rare thing does change, everyone will spot the new item in the list and take notice.

2. Reminders

This is the perfect time for callouts. Does a player forget his character sheet often? Are there special parking arrangements this time? Was there homework to do? Did PCs need leveling up?

Add any reminders to your session announcement emails – it’s a great service to your group.

3. Announcements

Got any news, updates or special announcements? You might not have these often, but asking yourself each time if there are any is a good exercise.

For example, last session reminder I had news that a preferred pizza place now offered delivery to the usual game location.

Another example is player birthdays or special occasions. Noting these might encourage things like congrats emails, bringing the group closer together.

4. Add Session Notes

You might want to include info about what happened last session. Best case for busy GMs is to paste in notes from another source. You don’t want to turn these session notice emails into newsletters here, as my experience is it’s not a sustainable activity. You’ll be pressed for time, and some emails will get notes while others don’t, and inconsistency tends to create apathy.

(If you want to do campaign newsletters, that’s awesome and I heartily recommend it. This is beyond the scope of these tips, but RolepalyingTips.com has a few campaign newsletter articles and tips: Save Time & Get More Planning Done Through Campaign Newsletters, Campaign Newsletter Advice, Campaign Newsletter Example, Lessons Learned from behind the GM Screen.)

Another gotcha is many players do not have the time or inclination to read long campaign summaries.

A great format is 5 Bullets. If you had to condense last session into five points, what would they be? This forces you to be brief, and it serves your group well by reminding them what happened last game so they’ll be ready when the next session starts without a lot of reading required. Use the 5 Bullets method – it’s sustainable.

5. Talk About Open Loops

A great service to your group. Remind everyone about what hooks are still open and what issues are still unresolved. This can help guide focus discussion between sessions too. And add bonus is such reminders keep gamers interested in the campaign.

6. Take Care of Administration

Any admin you can take care of between games gives everyone more session time to roleplay.

• Bookkeeping
• Statistics
• Q&A about rules
• Gathering Information skill checks
• Leveling up questions
• Experience points and other awards
• Skill checks involving appraisals
• Item creation checks

7. Figure out the best timing

When do players make decisions about showing up to your game? Be sure to get your session email reminder in there at just the right time so the game session is top of mind. Sneaky, but effective.

For example, a player might have his work schedule chat with his boss once a month on the 1st. Get your game session email to that player on the last day of each month.

8. Use a distribution list

Use a system that ensures you contact every player for every game every time. Typing in player names in the email To: field each time is going to end up in occasional forgotten players. If they don’t contact you saying they didn’t receive a game notice email, they might not show up to next game because they don’t know it’s on!

Get a foolproof system. I use a Yahoo! Group. My players have all signed up as members. When I email the group, I know everyone is being sent my messages.

Another option is to create an email shortcut on your desktop. For Windows, this is just a normal shortcut you create by right-clicking on your desktop and choosing New > Shortcut. The location will be:

mailto:player 1 email; player 2 email; player 3 email;

A third method is to create a distribution list in your email software.

9. Use A Template

Give your reminder emails a distinctive style that stays consistent with each mailout. This helps everyone identify it’s a game session organization email, and worth spotting and reading every time.

Plus, players will learn where to find the information they need each time rather than trying to figure out a new layout each message.

First, use a consistent subject line that supplies your primary message, usually game date confirmation. “Game session: Aug 15”. If your players only ever read the subject line, then they’ll at least know the game is on and when.

Second, put the session logistics into a template that goes at the top of the email, so players can scan for the information they need, just like a stat block makes NPC and monster reading efficient.

• Session date:
• Start time:
• End time:
• Food/snack duties:

Third, for each other section you have (e.g. session notes, reminders, contact info) create a clear header. This makes your email easy to skim, and if a player only quests for certain information they can find it fast.

So, this is our 100th post to CM. It’s also just a couple of weeks short of our first anniversary. It’s been a great year at CM, full of positive experiences. So Johnn and I thought we might take this chance to reminisce…

Mike’s Memories

It’s been a fantastic year.

CM’s articles have set the bar for articles very high – far higher than we really expected when we first started. While we were groping around a bit for the first post or two, we found our feet really quickly.

The site has gotten some great reviews, which has been absolutely fantastic. I appreciate the recognition we’ve recieved more than I can express in words, and at the same time I am constantly aware of the responsibility that such positive words carry to live up to them in future.

I’ve especially enjoyed the times I’ve been able to write about my philosophy of gaming, and of world creation, and of campaign creation. There have been some very rewarding discussions concerning house rules, as well. And the compliments and comments on the posts relating to material from my own campaigns have been really gratifying.

I am especially proud of the great participation we’ve had with our readers. Even when dealing with hot topics, we’ve been able to walk the fine line between expounding our own views and respecting the views of others. The end result has been great discussion that has never degenerated into flame wars – not even once. My congratulations and appreciation to everyone who has posted a comment! You’re a bigger part of CM than perhaps you realise.

Another success has been Ask The GMs, which was an idea that neither Johnn nor I had even thought of when we started CM. It’s really great to have been able to help so many GMs.

You may have noticed that we recently added a new panel to our RHS navigation on the site, listing our favorite posts for the year. These are the posts that we’re proudest of, so if you havn’t read them already, go ahead and check them out. Hopefully, you’ll find them as useful and interesting to read as they were to write.

Well, that’s about all I’ve got; so I’ll throw the metaphoric spotlight over to Johnn. Thanks for joining us for our first hundred posts, and we look forward to sharing another hundred with you!

— Mike

Johnn’s Reflections

Time flies when you are having fun. It seems like yesterday Mike and I were planning out Campaign Mastery and discussing what kinds of posts we’d create, how often we’d post, and how we’d organise the website.

It has been great getting into a regular posting rhythm. I was worried whether I could fit a regular blog into my life, but as I learned from Roleplaying Tips, consistency creates habits that always seem to find a way to fit into busy lives. Oh, and Mike has been an awesome blogging partner and he covered my carcass several times this year when I became too swamped to post. Hehe.

The Ask The GMs column was a great surprise. When publishing, you never know for sure if what you’re rambling on about is going to be useful to gamers. By answering a question, though, you are guaranteed to at least be helping one person! Plus, it’s great learning what specific issues game masters have these days with their camapigns, and your help requests let us know what we should be writing more about in the future.

If you have any GMing questions for Ask the GMs, drop us a line.

All your comments have been great. Several have helped my campaigns, and I apprectate the time and thought you put into your replies. I’ve seen many blogs with long lists of comments that are just one-liner me too responses. But your comments here are full of wonderful details and game master advice. This not only inspires Mike and I, but you are keeping the RPG community thriving by helping other game masters run their campaigns.

I think Mike feels the same as I do that we are getting better at this blogging thing with each and every post. My enthusiasm for Campaign Mastery continues to grow and grow. Every week I keep adding post ideas to my planning wiki – there will never be a shortage, lol.

Looking forward to the next year, we’re going to keep up with our twice-weekly updates, I have my Combat Hazards series to continue, plus a couple other series I’m mulling over.  Requests are always welcome. Mike and I continue to plan posts to help inspire your campaigns and keep them running.

I’ll be looking forward to all your comments in the next 100 posts!

How can you make the players feel like their actions have an impact on the world?

Sometimes, the simplest questions have the most complicated or profound answers. So it was with some trepidation that we’ve approached this question, which was asked virtually exactly as it’s quoted at the head of this article. The short answer is, you can’t. You can’t make anyone feel anything, and you can’t get people to feel like their actions have an impact on the world unless those actions actually do make a difference. So the real questions are far more complicated: How can the players impact the game world? How are the consequences of PC actions determined? How do the PCs become aware of these consequences? How can the GM ensure that the Players recognise the connection between action and consequences? And how can the administration of these changes be kept practical? These are all big, beefy, questions, with answers both complicated and profound…

Mike’s Answer: Every stone makes ripples in the pond

The title of this answer says it all very succinctly – everything the PCs do ultimately has an impact on the game world, or it should. Nothing occurs in isolation; it always has a context, and it is impossible to observe an event without interacting with it – and that interaction has consequences that the context defines.

Even if your campaign is nothing but a series of dungeon crawls in which the party invades some collection of lairs and kills or drives off the inhabitants, it does not exist in isolation. The (intelligent) escapees are far more likely to get out, and will spread word of the prowess of the party; when they enter a subsequent dungeon, they will be recognised and NPCs/intelligent creatures will react – either with stronger and more determined attacks that are targeted against the PCs known or imagined vulnerabilities, or by setting up traps to delay the party while the monsters sneak out the back door – with their loot, thank you very much – and go somewhere else.

Eventually, alliances will be forged with the sole purpose of curbing this danger, and acts will become more desperate and dangerous; kobolds will summon devils and pledge themselves to dark service if the devils will only deal with this terrible threat.

The next step up in campaign sophistication is to have the PCs interact with someone outside the dungeon in some limited way – they might stay at inns, buy products and services, sell unwanted goodies, and so on. The people they trade with will do their best to operate at a profit, so some of them will grow rich, and some of those who do will start doing things with their money.

Other businesses of the type the PCs are dealing with will spring up in competition with those already established; established businesses will trade hands; businessmen will start dabbling with political ambitions; others will oppose these newcomers, and may even target the PCs that are the source of all this wealth (since money equals power); some traders will get greedy, and try to gouge the PCs. There will be people who want a share of the wealth, earned or otherwise, either as an act of charity, or from an act of deception. Initially, these will be local effects, but in time they will grow.

A further step in sophistication, and dungeons begin to fade or even vanish as a source of adventures. The PCs get involved in local politics and whole scenarios take place above ground. Instead of being sources of great wealth per se, the PCs become the world’s problem solvers, dealing with Orc Raiding Parties and Thieves Guilds and Corrupt Nobles and so on.

Always, the trend here is for bigger campaign worlds and more involvement with the bigger picture – and that means bigger and splashier consequences. Ultimately, at higher levels, a careless word can influence commodity markets and political systems. Some people will become self-appointed champions of the ’causes’ the PCs espouse, and some of them will go too far. The PCs will be treated like rock stars, and everybody knows that they never have problems!

Determining the consequences

Every action has someone beyond the PCs who benefits, and someone who is disadvantaged. There will be those who agree with what the PCs have done and those who don’t. There will be those who want to take advantage of what the PCs have done, and those who want to stop them, and those who want to take revenge for past acts. And always, there will be the growing reputation and wealth to consider.

Identify all of these, decide how they would go about trying to achieve those goals, and then look at how these NPC actions will impact the PCs. Because nothing shows players that their characters are having an impact on the world better than the world having an impact on the PCs.

Revealing the consequences

Not all of the consequences will have a direct affect on the PCs. Not all of them will make an immediate difference. Sometimes, the relationship between cause and effect will be distant and obscure.

The most immediate impacts should be fairly obvious, and might even be mundane or trivial. If a character buys a meal from a particular trader on their way to the dungeon and tips well, there might be two or three traders offering the same meal when he emerges. The following trip, there are half-a-dozen traders, and they start elbowing each other and fighting amongst themselves to be in the best position.

The time after that, the trader that the PC has bought from most often has a sign up describing his wares as the PC’s favorites. The time after that, and that business has expanded, and put on more staff, and people start going to that establishment to meet the PC. The time after that, and a number of rival businesses have closed, and one that’s struggling has hired someone to burn down the ‘favored business’.

The time after that, and security guards have been added and the PC has a ‘reserved section’ just for him. A bard tries to curry favour by forcible serenading the character with a song he’s written about his favorite food. The time after that, and a rival ambushes the PC. The time after that, a punk kid looking to make a reputation shows up to challenge the PC. The time after that, and the businessman is complaining about all the tax increases that have been aimed at his business since it has become so prosperous. The time after that, perhaps some ‘businessmen’ are insisting that the merchant join their ‘insurance’ scam. The time after that, and a young female shows up, insisting that the PC is the father of her child. And on and on and on….

You might have to spell it out the first time for the PC, but it will soon become a running gag within the campaign, and something that the players will even look forward to – especially if you (usually) play it as not-quite-deadly-serious, or even outright as light relief.

The more distant and obscure the relationship between action and reaction, the more the GM has to sell the relationship to the PCs. If that means that the NPC involved has to spell it out (“You didn’t really think that you could interfere with the Brewer’s Alliance and get away with it, did you? Selling the Flask Of Never-ending Amber Fluid was the last straw…”), then that’s what he should do.

It only takes a couple of running gags and a persistent background ‘hum’ of other consequences, and the players will have absolutely no doubt that they are having an impact. With more experience and practice at it, you will start seeing these consequences as ‘blatantly obvious’ and start linking them together to form a more substantial structure:

• Act 1
• Consequence 1 of Act 1
• Consequence 2 of Act 1, plus Reaction 1 to Consequence 1…

… and so on, while at the same time, you also have

• –
• Act 2
• Consequence 1 of Act 2

… and so on again, each act adding ripples of consequence and reaction until the accumulated effects completely alter the campaign.

Keeping It Practical

The easiest way to keep all this practical is to let those consequences and reactions that don’t offer the GM interesting opportunities to affect the campaign fade away into insignificance. Limit the scope of the effects according to their level of interest to you, in other words.

The more groups you have predefined, the easier it is to run down the list and pick out those that are most likely to have an interest in any given PC act; if you also keep that list fairly generic but pick out one or two specific example(s) to take action, you start populating the world with specific groups with the potential to interact with the PCs.

Some of these groups will appear, do their thing, and then vanish, never to be heard from again; but the outcome of that confrontation will start its own ripples. Other groups might become a persistent thorn in the PCs sides, or a piece of omnipresent campaign colour, if more ideas about how to use them come to mind. I’ll generally put any group to one side once I’m finished with it, but every now and then I’ll run over the list of such groups to see if any new ideas for using them occur to me.

The Effect On Campaign Design

When most GMs first start to design campaigns, they set up a magnificent structure with everything predefined and predestined and packaged and labelled and in it’s place. They then can’t bear to see their grand plans fail to come to fruition, and the result is a series of plot trains.

With more experience at consequences, and a little more thought, A GM can learn to design campaigns that are like supersaturated solutions – campaigns that consist of nothing but opportunities for the PCs to cause someone to react in an interesting manner, to cause something to crystallise out. The campaign itself becomes an environmental landscape, a backdrop against which the choices of the players and the characters that they control define the adventures that will take place. Every action, and every failure to act, simply defines a future scenario. And every such scenario brings with it new opportunities to act, or fail to act…

Johnn’s Answer

How can you make the players feel like their actions have an impact on the world?

Whew, that’s a big question. As Mike alluded to, I would decide right now if you are a hard core world builder. If you have the time and passion for extensive world design, then I would take a simulation approach to this question.

Build a detailed world

To know what impact the PCs will have you need to know what there is to impact. In the simulation approach, you need to build up the details of your world to create an inventory of potential consequences for PC actions.

Go play the Civilization video game for several hours. Get a feel for the rhythms of change and what types of things change. See how the physical, political, and economic worlds change. Watch how cities change. Look at the impact of technology and world wonders.

After playing Civ for awhile, look at your own world through the same lens. Get out your maps of civilized areas and see how they might interact. Look at your pantheons and see how they interact. Get a grasp of the economics and resources of your world and determine how things are currently balanced.

With the big picture stuff out of the way (I brushed over a lot of stuff there – quest for more world building advice online) focus on the adventuring area. Put detail into the power structure: authority, resources and wealth, military and muscle, the leaders and power brokers.

Then use a local area world building process to flesh out the adventuring area so you will know what is in play and at stake when the PCs start to create their ripples and waves.

You should also check out resources such as A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe to help build the pond the PCs are in.

Stick with what is in the spotlight

If you are not a hard core world builder, because it does not interest you or you do not have time, then you should narrow planning down to the pond the PCs are playing in. Forget the ocean.

Pick two notable events and one minor event

After each session note the events that occurred in the game. Key in on events that involve the outside world – NPCs, locations, items.

For example, last session the PCs in my game had some intra-party conflict. A cursed sword and barbaric code is causing one PC to descend into madness, and the savage warrior and civilized wizard nearly came to blows. However, all events were contained within the party. So, the world does not need to react to this. Perhaps if an NPC was spying on the PCs and he reported back to his master, then the world might indeed react to this information. But that wasn’t the case.

With a list of events in hand, pick two significant ones and a seemingly insignificant one. Figure out cause and effect for just these three events. If you have time you could tangle with more events the PCs were involved in, but three gives you a nice number.

Use the 5 Ws

As discussed in a recent issue of Roleplaying Tips, take each event and run it through a series of questions using Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. Write down ideas that come to mind.

Use encounters to broadcast changes

Interacting with repercussions is the best way to show the PCs how they are having an effect in the game world. Turn answers to your 5 W questions into encounter seeds. Run encounters as they trigger.

If encounters do not trigger then let some expire (see Close loops quickly, below). Let others merge into new encounter seeds (i.e. the situations evolve and develop without further PC interference).

Use NPCs to broadcast changes

Within encounters, the best way to communicate how the PCs have changed the world is through NPCs. Through NPC interactions you can bring the full range of consequences, emotions, and gameplay options into effect. NPCs, by their nature, are interactive.

For example, if the PCs cause a fire you could certainly use that location for future encounters. First encounter you describe the ruins. Second encounter there you describe early repairs. Third encounter a month later you describe the new building and the new warning sign.

However, those situations become much more interesting if PCs meet the victim(s) of the fire and interact with them. In the second encounter PCs could meet onlookers and repairmen. Third encounter PCs meet the victims again plus the new bouncer or guard or city watch. Each of these NPC interactions can illuminate the suffering and cost of the fire the PCs caused, where conversation, combat, and puzzles are all possible encounter elements.

Use NPCs to show players the effect they are having on the setting.

Use reputation

An easy technique for creating a reactive world is reputation. Have word of PC actions and descriptions precede them in encounters. Have NPCs call them by name before introductions are made. Have NPCs act based on gossip, news and opinion received before ever meeting the PCs.

Generate sycophants, rivals and enemies

Bring in new NPCs – or even better, have known NPCs change their relationship with the PCs – to be rivals, enemies, and people who seek to gain personal advantage from their relationship to the player characters. Generate these relationships because of events and PC actions. Be sure to illustrate this via roleplay and encounters.

Close loops quickly

If you are using the spotlight method, keep changes happening quickly and be done with their effects just as quickly. If you want extended repercussions, and layered consequences, then I advise moving toward more of a world building approach.

The PCs will be doing so many things each session, on average, that you will not be able to keep up with all the causes and effects, especially if you carry over a lot from previous situations. Resolve things quick and move on to the next three actions you choose to act upon between sessions.

Those are a few tips for making players feel like they are making an impact on the world. Hopefully they help.

Ask The GMs to get help with your game master and campaign issues. More info >