Alignment Shift

I have spent more than a third of Tabletop Gaming Month talking about alignment. It seems excessive, but it truly is necessary. For one thing, when role playing is literally the name of the game, it is crucial to understand the role that you are playing. For another thing, it is a concept that is equally as important to tabletop games as it is to writing. And finally, it is one of the most hotly debated aspects of role playing games, so it demands a certain amount of time.

The greatest debate of alignments is what they are for. Some people say the one's alignment is the framework that dictates their actions. If a Neutral Good character wanted to abandon a child in a burning building in order to pull out a treasure chest, the player should be told that it is completely against alignment. The problem is that, since one of the key aspects of gaming is that you can try literally anything you want, one should never be told that they can't do something.

This leads to the other side of the debate, which is that alignments are a description of a character's actions. So once a character has made enough actions, they will have an alignment that sums them up. The problem with this is that it's useless. Alignment becomes a label that has no bearing on gameplay or characterization.

In reality, the best answer is between these two. A character's alignment should matter. It should be considered either a framework or an ideal. Whatever the character thinks is right or is acceptable, at least on a basic level, should be contained within the alignment they choose. However, it should never be a cage for them. A character should be able to shift alignments.

If the Neutral Good character lets children die to acquire gold, they should first be warned that this is not a Good action, but they should still be permitted to do it. However, after they go through with it, they can no longer be considered Neutral Good; they have crossed the line into Neutral Evil.

Alignment shift should not be terribly common, and when they do happen, it should be monumental. Much as in real life, people can change. They can change drastically. And there is usually one moment where their conscious thought changes. That is when they have changed alignments. The world doesn't suddenly become different, but the way the character sees the world has changed. That will also change how they treat the world, which will change how the world treats them back.

When you consider alignment as ideology, it solves a lot of the problems that come up with some of the stricter interpretations of it, while still giving it a meaning within the game and the story. Role playing, more than anything else, is a game about consequences. We can do as we please, but we will reap what we sow for it. Anything that stifles that weakens the game and lessens the playing experience.