Unknowingly Evil?
The first thing that comes to mind is whether your alignment is based
around what you intent or what you achieve. If you got an evil demon
pretending to be good to tag along with the party, they aren't going
to get much of a chance to do much evil. However, does this make them
good? They are doing good things, right? The general census among my
players is no. Alignment pertains to your intent. If due to your 6
intelligence or pure bad luck you end up unintentionally unleashing
evil upon the world, that doesn't make you chaotic evil. Willingly
doing so because it sounded fun would. Probably.
Grades
Only having 9 different options makes alignments as originally described
rather limiting. Typically I haven't seen them used this way. Some
level of shading was always acknowledged in the groups I played with.
You could be lawful neutral with a good bent. This will be obviously
different from a character who is lawful good but hovering close to
neutral. In our terminology having a bent was the same as hovering a bit closer to another alignment. Playing with the grades and shading between the hard
divisions helps lead to more varied characters. It's also something
that naturally happens if you go in the reverse direction and don’t
think about alignment when making your character. Deciding what kind
of character you want to play and then working backwards for their
alignment is perfectly valid. Of course, it kind of makes you wonder
why you need to even bother with alignment, but I find that it's a
good exercise because it forces you to think deeper about your
character. Since I've given some examples, I've found that lawful
neutral with an evil bent can also be fun to play and be a part of.
The player I know who did this last described it as someone who is
lawful neutral but has grown bitter and a tad selfish through
circumstance and bad fortune. Typically a good question to ask is
“why is my character not this other alignment”?
What's It For?
A good thing to think about with any mechanic is why does it exist.
Alignment is similar in this regard. Could we play just fine without
worrying about alignment and coming up with characters on our own?
Sure. I've seen it work. However, alignment gives us a starting point
and helps us examine the motivation of our character. To assign an
alignment to your character you need to think about your character.
As a result even if I don't agree with your interpretation, it may
have helped you think about your character's motivations and how they
think. It is also something you can reference later to you help you
play your character. It can be surprisingly helpful after a month or so break.
I find it is a very useful thing for a Dungeon Master. Of course it
isn't as specific as we sometimes might like but we Dungeon Masters
play many different characters over the course of a session. This
little short form is extremely useful to get the gist of who your
character is. You probably won't have time to define every henchman
in the dungeon. However, you can give them an alignment and work
within it as the game goes. Being able to reference something and
having a starting point to work from makes it easier for me to
improvise on the fly. I find that again, this is one of the hardest
parts of improvising for me: trimming all the possible options I have
for a character down to something useable quickly. And alignment is
one tool in our arsenal for this sort of thing. In this regard it is
especially useful for running adventures envisioned by someone else.
An alignment, goal, and couple of mannerism and you’re well on your
way to having a character in less than 20 words.
