Thursday, March 3, 2011

My Brand-Spanking New Alignment System Which I Will Never Use...

You could say I believe in a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach to alignment. Or you could say I don't give much of fuck about it unless my players do.

Here are the only observed alignment elements I've ever actually seen in a game:

ADD--PC wants to do things. Fast. NOW. Will totally admit to being willing to do the wrong thing as long as it is something.

Sneaky--PC wants to think of clever things to do, then do them. The end is largely irrelevant, the sneaky means is the end.

Greedy--PC wants to get gold, level up, or whatever s/he thinks is worth doing in this game to make him/her more badass.

Bloodthirsty
--PC is fighty.

Curious--PC wants to find out what the fuck is going on in this dungeon/world/city/city-state.

Righteous--PC wants to Do The Right Thing. (Does not include helping fellow PCs, this is a bolt-on characteristic that anybody of any alignment might do.)

Fancy--Player wants to role-play in the Theatre Club sense of the word and does all kinds of seemingly game-goal-not-achieving stuff. May even go so far as to want to use an alignment system.

Laid Back--PC will pretty much do whatever his/her friends are doing.

Note:
PCs can also be--re: their fellow PCs--Disruptive, Helpful, or Apathetic, but since everybody is one of these things and it sometimes depends on which fellow PC they're thinking of, it ruins the elegance of the system and I left it out.
________

An alignment is a string of these words in order of their priority to the PC:

Fafhrd is Righteous Greedy Curious
The Mouser is Greedy Sneaky Curious
Elric is Fancy
Pippin (in the movie) is Laid Back ADD
Bilbo is Fancy Curious

Kimberly Kane always plays Bloodthirsty ADD
Mandy plays Curious Fancy
Connie plays Sneaky ADD Greedy
Frankie plays Sneaky Greedy
Satine plays Fancy Greedy Sneaky
Caroline Pierce is Laid Back
Cameraman Darren is Laid Back Sneaky
McCormick is Righteous
I play Sneaky ADD Curious