Character Creation: Difference between revisions
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
| Line 226: | Line 226: | ||
==Choose an Alignment== | ==Choose an Alignment== | ||
Character alignment is a way to abstractly state a character's moral and philosophical outlook on life. It is not a replacement for a character's backstory or personality traits, but it is a useful way to summarize that personality. Many | Character alignment is a way to abstractly state a character's moral and philosophical outlook on life. It is not a replacement for a character's backstory or personality traits, but it is a useful way to summarize that personality. The alignment of a character is a guide to the moral and ethical demeanor of that character, but nothing is set in stone. | ||
Many campaigns will have moral and ethical elements (dare we say, even dilemma's?) as part and parcel of the challenges that face heroes. A major portion of that in most game worlds is the presence of fantastical Gods and their associated religions and worshippers. As a result, a character's Alignment can have story-driven game impacts. If your game world has fantastic religions as part of the environment, your choice of alignment for the character can have serious effects. | |||
If the prominent religion in your game world is a sun-worshipping faction that performs frequent and massive rites of huan sacrifice, then declaring your character to be 'Chaotic Good' is going to lead to many interesting role-playing opportunities and more than a few moral dilemmas. | |||
That being said, there are no specific mechanics for HOW a character's alignment interacts with the game world. This is nearly a pure story-driven thing, and should be handled on a case-by-case basis by every Game Master based upon the game they wish to run for their friends. Scenarios that would be perfectly acceptable for one group of friends may be much more difficult for a different group. Each Game Master must run THEIR game for THEIR table of players. | |||
As a rule of thumb, for simple 'kill the monsters and sell the treasure' scenarios, alignment is not often a critical factor. Less experienced GM's may wish to leave the heavy 'dilemmas and consequences' role-playing elements out of their game, in which case, declaring by fiat that all adventurers have the 'Detached' alignment is the simple and effective course of action. If you have a character who needs mechanics for Deific powers, refer to the character class for details of how those mechanics will work. | |||
There are two sets of three alignments, which when combined means there are nine possible alignments. This is most easily viewed as a chart: | There are two sets of three alignments, which when combined means there are nine possible alignments. This is most easily viewed as a chart: | ||