Alignment and You: A Study in Morality
- Tanner Jensen
- Oct 26, 2017
- 3 min read
If you've been keeping up with my latest posts, you'll know that I promised to go into detail on a few points that I have skipped over in my Reading Character Sheets series. Alignment is one of those skipped concepts, and its one I'll be going over now.
Building your character's backstory and personality, you've probably determined a lot about how they have acted in the past, and even some of how they may act in certain situations. However, when you actually start playing it can sometimes be difficult to decide how to stick to your character's personality without making decisions based on your own desires and knowledge. That's where Alignment comes in.
Alignment is, speaking broadly, a scale of personality based on two factors: morality, and lawfulness. Your background will help a bit in determining where your character falls on this scale, but first it is important to actually understand the scale itself.
On the Morality side of the scale, we have the possible tags of Good, Neutral, and Evil.
Good: Helpful, caring, looks out for the interests of others, willing to do the "right" thing
Neutral: Prefers not to take sides, neither helpful nor selfish
Evil: Selfish, self-centered, concerned only with what benefits them, often willing to do anything to benefit themselves at the cost of others.
On the Lawful side, we have Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic.
Lawful: Committed to a firm moral, traditional, or lawful code. Carries out actions within the confines of that code.
Neutral: Not particularly committed to any one one code, but will not go out of their way to break a code.
Chaotic: Little regard for laws or traditions, acts as conscience directs with little regard for codes of others, little consistency in actions or beliefs. Unlikely to act in a way that society would regard as normal.
A character's alignment is determined by picking one tag from each list, resulting in one of nine distinct alignments, shown in the chart below. Characters with these alignments act in the following ways:
Lawful Good: Acts in the interest of others within the confines of a firm moral or lawful code. Will do the right thing as expected by society.
Neutral Good: Will act to help others as needed, may act outside of moral and lawful codes if they feel it is necessary.
Chaotic Good: Acts as their conscience directs, with little to no regard for the laws and codes of others. Will try to help others, but will do so outside the law and societal norms if they decide to.
Lawful Neutral: Acts within the confines of a firm moral or lawful code, but has no particular dedication to helping or hurting others. More likely to act as their code dictates than as their conscience does.
True Neutral: Acts with no particular regard for laws, codes, or other creatures, doing what seems best at the time.
Chaotic Neutral: Follows their desires with no regard for codes and little regard for other creatures. Holds personal freedom above all else.
Lawful Evil: Will act to gain maximum personal profit within a firm moral or legal code.
Neutral Evil: Do what they can get away with, with no particular commitment to following or breaking codes. No particular dedication to any goal or code.
Chaotic Evil: Act in personal interest with no regard for the lives and codes of others, often committing arbitrary acts of evil and violence on spur-of-the-moment whims.
If you spend 2 seconds to look up "D&D Alignment" in Google images, you'll see hundreds of charts like the one above filled in with particular politicians, movie characters, countries, comic book characters, and many more according to what the creator believes each character can be categorized as. Some may align with what you think about those characters, and some may seem completely inaccurate. The truth is that you're both right.
Alignment is a messy and often ambiguous system, simply because most characters that you will play and interact with will not fit perfectly into just one alignment. Additionally, certain alignments will not always act in one way. Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil characters may commit good acts if they stand to profit from it. Some actions conducted by Lawful Neutral characters may be considered evil, even if they align with the law.
In the end, alignment means as much as you want it to mean. Use it as a guide for how your character may act, but don't create unnecessary restrictions on yourself. People change, and so can alignments. When we look at background in my next post, we'll start to see more of how they can help to shape your character's alignment. Until then, take care.
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