Alignment is a guide to your character’s basic moral and ethics used to provide a clear idea of how your character will handle moral dilemmas, but doesn’t prevent your character from changing beliefs, acting irrationally, or behaving out of character. There are three possible alignments:
Good #
A Good character typically acts altruistically, without regard for or against lawful precepts such as rules or tradition. A Good character has no problem with cooperating with lawful officials, but does not feel beholden to them. In the event that doing the right thing requires the bending or breaking of rules, they do not necessary suffer internal conflict, though this is possible.
Good characters do their best to help others, but they do it because they want to, not because they have been told to by a person in authority or by society’s laws.
While they will generally follow the rules and laws of society, they do so because they lead to good outcomes, rather than because they feel obligated to by authority figures and institutions.
A Good person will break the rules if they are doing it for good reasons and they will feel confident and justified in their actions.
One negative of good characters is that they care about upholding Good more than abiding by any laws, so they can be unpredictable if pushed.
Neutral #
A Neutral character tends not to feel strongly towards any alignment, or actively seeks their balance.
Neutral characters don’t like to take sides. They are pragmatic rather than emotional in their actions, choosing the response which makes the most sense for them in each situation.
Neutral characters don’t believe in upholding the rules and laws of society, but nor do they feel the need to rebel against them. There will be times when a Neutral character has to make a choice between siding with Good or Evil. They will make a choice in these situations, usually siding with whichever causes them the least hassle, or they stand to gain the most from.
A Neutral character may be preoccupied with their own agenda and simply have no interest in what’s happening around them, they may just be looking to see who can offer them the best deal, or simply doing what’s most convenient in any situation.
On the negative side, Neutral characters can come across as apathetic and indecisive. They can be frustrating to work with because they don’t want to commit to any side.
Evil #
Evil characters are selfish. Their actions are driven by their own wants whether that’s power, greed, attention, or something else. They will follow laws if they happen to align with their ambitions, but they will not hesitate to break them if they don’t.
They don’t believe that following laws and traditions makes anyone a better person. Instead, they use other people’s beliefs in codes and loyalty against them, using it as a tool to influence their behaviour.
These characters make allegiances with others to further their own agenda but will quickly leave allies when they are no longer useful.
Characters with an Evil alignment will hurt others if it furthers their agenda but they will not harm people for no particular reason. Unless their agenda is to spread evil for evil’s sake, in which case, they may harm others en masse.
Above all else, Evil characters care about one thing and one thing only, themselves.
Evil characters are particularly bad because they can carry out evil for evil’s sake, with no code to follow or rebel against.
Changing Alignment #
Through actions player characters are able to alter their alignment, however the process of doing so is not generally concluded overnight. The duration required to ‘change’ depends on the character’s past history. Someone who has a long history of following a specific alignment will take longer to re-align.
There is a direct link between Alignment and Fame. Characters who have alot of positive Fame points will have an alignment of Good or at least Neutral. Negative Fame points would need to be obtained to over-set the positive Fame points to firstly bring the character back to a Neutral alignment before continuing to move towards a Good alignment.
The GM can change the player character’s alignment based on multiple turn results, tightly coupled to the character’s actions and awarded fame points. Player’s can also request for a re-alignment. The GM will assess the player’s motivation and act accordingly.
All player characters start out as Neutral.