Personality Alignments

I really like the idea of Alignment as a way to understand a character, but it is an incomplete system. As I mentioned in my series on them, alignments give a sort of framework of characterization, but every alignment can be expressed in several very different ways.

What I have come to realize is that there is another set of axes that can be used to describe a character, and that is their personality. It can feel very similar to Alignment, but where Alignment is is more of a character's moral beliefs, Personality is more of how they interact with other people. Another way to describe it is that Personality is how a person acts when there is no moral issue at hand.

The two axes I use are Happy/Unhappy and Loyal/Chaotic. This system came up while working on the Pokemon RPG with my friend. We wanted pokemon to be unique, even when they were members of the same species. In the games, Pokemon have a nature that affects them in certain ways, and we were looking for a way to implement that. This system is what we came up with and we were very happy with it.

Happiness is a pretty simple concept to understand. Are people doing things with a smile or a frown? Happiness also lends itself to exuberance. A happy person has more energy and is more excited to do things. An unhappy person will be more lethargic.

Loyalty, although that may not be the best word to describe it, boils down to how well they will do what they are asked/told. A very loyal person certainly has their own thoughts and beliefs, but if somebody else asks them to do otherwise, they will oblige. A very chaotic person will do whatever the hell they want.

Much like Alignment, Personality can be expressed in many ways. So although there are 9 quadrants, there are for more personalities to experience. I will be going into each of them more in depth, but always remember that no matter how thoroughly you try to explain personalities, there are more in existence than you can describe.