(01-13-2014, 03:50 PM)FreelanceWizard Wrote:(01-13-2014, 03:38 PM)LiadansWhisper Wrote: Remember, Alignments are just a lodestone that points you in a particular direction. Â They aren't shackles that bind you in place. Â
I totally agree with this. Putting aside their purpose in the Objective Good and Evil worlds of typical D&D settings, alignments are, IMO, just a good starting point for describing a character's morality, whether they're D&D alignments or the more realistic (to me, anyway) Palladium ones. They're a convenient shorthand to say, "In general, my character approaches situations like this;" they definitely don't capture all the nuance of a character.
TheLastCandle Wrote:Â And people tend to forget that, even in D&D, a character's alignment can and often does change with his/her experiences. It's just a convenient two-word phrase that can (often fairly accurately) describe your character's ethos.
All of the above are excellent points concerning the nature of the D&D alignments. Its important not to think of them in completely black/white terms. When I'm assigning a character an alignment, which I usually do (as it can be a helpful lodestone when designing a character), I always find it help to internally assign a secondary alignment; that a character tends towards in order to help create inherent dichotomy within the character.
An example of this being my main. I categorize her as a Lawful Good character. Even if many may have a hard time seeing her as such, as a result of her secondary alignment of Lawful Evil. To be clear, I don't actually consider her the latter. She simply that she fluctuates between those two alignments, bypassing neutral on the scale. An outsider looking in on her, may even consider her evil. And while I do not believe that she is anywhere near that point yet, I am aware that it could happen.Â
That description means something to me, as she develops as a character, and helps to guide when she makes crucial decisions. I think, where is she on the scale? And for a character like her who is sometimes rides that very thin line, its a guide. A tool. Thats it. Its a set of basic tenants that a character follows in everyday situations. This has really excellent in depth analyses of alignments, if there is someone that hasn't run into that the site before.
What it isn't is a description of your character. It doesn't encompass why they are the way they are, their core being. Nor does it completely describe the full range of behavior and outlooks that an alignment can have.
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