Checking Your Alignment

4.0 Edition brought a lot of changes to D&D. One of those changes was a simplification of the alignment system. Unfortunately, the new system is far too simple and the most popular alignments have been removed. As part of continuing efforts to improve the fourth edition system, here is my interpretation of the 3.5 edition alignments:

Lawful Good
"I don't care how evil he is, we are not going to murder the king in cold blood."
Done Right: The Lawful Good character is dedicated to something or someone. This could be a set of ideals, like a religion, a personal code, like chivalry or Bushido, or it could be a person. If your armored knight is dedicated to protecting the disguised princess he travels with, he could very well be Lawful Good (If your armored knight is dedicated to protecting the disguised prince she travels with, I might just love you). You don't condone the chaotic actions of other party members, and you may challenge them over more excessive acts, but you recognize that you need to be able to work with them in order to succeed.

Done Wrong: This is the Lawful Good you're most familiar with. A bad Lawful Good character follows every law to the letter and refuses to make compromises for other party members. A bad LG character is an RP killer. Everything must go their way or they will refuse to do anything. They interact with a chip on their shoulder and a stick in their ass.

Neutral Good
"Sure there are laws against that, but we can bend the rules just this once."
Done Right: In many ways, "Neutral" is the most difficult word in this alignment system. As a Neutral Good character, you are honest and trustworthy and all that heroic stuff, but you see the laws/rules as having a little flex to them. You do still believe in the legitimacy of the laws, though, so don't think you can pass every chaotic act off as an exception. The balance of law and chaos may be a constant struggle within you, or it may just be your way of getting by. Either way, your existence is a display of careful restraint.

Done Wrong: The wrong way to be Neutral Good is to be uncommitted. Your actions are good, but they tend to be whatever strikes your fancy at the moment. Rather than balancing the Law-Chaos axis, you ignore it entirely. This is not a terrible way to play a character and it certainly won't bring down an entire game, but it does hamstring your character as far as development is concerned. It will be very difficult to decide how the campaign's big decisions effect the character if they've been an alignment flake.

Chaotic Good
"It's not 'theft,' per say. It's 'reallocation of resources.'"
Done Right: Chaotic Good is an "ends justify the means" kind of alignment. You believe that any law or tradition that gets in the way of your 'good' actions should be ignored at best or dismantled at worse. Most adventuring parties tend to be Chaotic Good in their beliefs and actions, particular when they decide to kill a corrupt king or other public figure without any kind of trial. You tend to be impulsive, unwilling or able to create long term plans and generally failing to consider the subtle effects your decision may have weeks or months down the line. Do you struggle against your chaotic nature or do you embrace it? Has it gotten you in trouble before?

Done Wrong: Honestly? It's really hard to screw up Chaotic Good. You do have to remember the "Good" part of it, though. On its own, Chaotic is not an excuse to stab innocents and burn down villages. It may not even be an excuse to murder the aforementioned king. A bad Chaotic Good character is the same as any other bad Chaotic character- chaotic to the point where it upsets game play.

Lawful Neutral
"This is how we've always done it."
Done Right: You are a follower of rules and traditions, no mater how morally questionable they may be. This may be due to a commitment to your family or your society's sense of honor, or it may be because you are a knight in service to a morally questionable society. Most Neutral characters still find Good more appealing than Evil, it just isn't as important to them. You also recognize that your teammates do not follow the sames rules as you. This will certainly lead to conflicts, but it is important for you to know why you are sticking with this group. What keeps you from just leaving them?

Done Wrong: You refuse to do anything that contradicts your code. No exceptions, no compromises. Every adventure consists of you attempting to force your teammates into your belief system and restricting their actions. A player like this is arguably worse than the Lawful Good one. A Lawful Neutral character's code of conduct may include things that the party cannot afford to do, such as executing all criminals. If you've got a character who's trying to kill the rogue every time there's an important piece of information to steal, you've more than likely got a dead game.

True Neutral
"It is most important that we keep our options open."
Done Right: True Neutral (or, more hilariously, "Neutral Neutral") is the favored alignment of Druids and they actually provide an excellent way of explaining it. Your actions are motivated by something that transcends Good and Evil/Chaos and Law. Nature is a perfect example: wild yet structured and harsh but gentle. Your actions always serve this greater purpose, yet your actions seem complete erratic to anyone who only sees in terms of the two dimensional system. You may be the wrath of a storm one second and the warth of the sun the next. What's important is that you know why you're doing these things. No one else needs to know.

Done Wrong: In fourth edition, True Neutral is renamed "unaligned." That's an excellent way to describe the wrong way to play the alignment. Your character is a hollow thing with an all-consuming apathy to the ways of the universe. But alignment is about what you do as well as what you say, so a truly "Unaligned" character would have to never to anything that was too Good or too Evil. Honestly, they'd have to never really do anything at all. How boring is that

Chaotic Neutral
"Is that a button? I MUST PUSH IT!"
Done Right: In a True Neutral alignment, the character is devoted to a greater concept which determines their actions. In Chaotic Neutral, that greater power is yourself. You are a paragon of impulsiveness and your only concern is your personal wants and needs. You honor deals and contracts as long as you feel like it and you work with your team because it serves your purposes. Its important for you to know what your long-term goals are if you want to play this alignment. The sheer possibilities of a Chaotic Neutral character can make it easy to just dick around with no real reason for existing.

Done Wrong: You do whatever you want with no regard for anything, especially your fellow adventurers. You execute important prisoners and let villains escape simply because "it's what my character would do." Other players may find you amusing at first, but they'll soon grow sick of you screwing up everything they try to plan.

Lawful Evil
"All citizens will report to the palace for the mandatory 'listen to me rant' seminar."
Done Right: A villain who rules with an iron fist is the most obvious example of Lawful Evil. People and societies of this alignment use their power to oppress those below themselves. Control is one of the most important aspects of Lawful Evil; it represents a person or system which is highly regimented according to traditions, personal code, or the whims of a tyrant. Oppression is often a result of this, but it is not a defining characteristic. The Kobolds live in Lawful Evil societies that have strict hierarchies, but are not necessarily oppressive to to even the lowest on the social ladder.

Done Wrong: As with most Evil characters, the worst thing you can do with a Lawful Evil villain is fail to explain why he's doing whatever he's doing. If the Evil king is a tyrant just because he feels like it, its hard to imagine why his people haven't overthrown him yet. A bad Lawful Evil character or society has no traditions or personal codes defining their lives and seems to be oppressive simply because the quest calls for it.

Neutral Evil
"Some days are 'Oppress the Innocent' days. Today's more of a 'Blow Stuff Up' day."
Done Right: A villain of this alignment is an average kind of Evil. They aren't the head of a sinister organization and they don't have a maddening desire to crust everything that opposes them. In some ways, they are the most dangerous villains; not personal code to exploit and still level-headed enough to operate behind the scenes and keep numerous allies. Because a Neutral Evil character has no distinct leanings towards Chaos or Law, they are able to ally with a wider array of other people and races.

Done Wrong: Bad neutral Evil characters are like Goombas: They come at you in endless, indistinct waves and killing enough of them in a row nets you a "1UP." Each Neutral Evil character, race, or society is exactly the same; drudging through life in their Evil ways and existing only as quest fodder.

Chaotic Evil
"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!"
Done Right: Chaotic Evil villains can be terrifying if they get enough power. Something or someone has convinced them that the only way to fix/control/get revenge on the world is to destroy it in its current form. These villains eat, sleep, and breathe destruction (The latter being literal in the case of Dragons). Players will probably be left with no choice but to put them down... unless they can figure out what set them off and cure/right the wrongs. Its important to know why your character is Chaotic Evil: What do they want, why do they want it, and how do they plan to get it?

Done Wrong: If you don't know why a villain is Chaotic Evil, he's just destroying stuff because he can. This actually isn't a terrible thing, it just limits the player's role-playing options. But maybe that's something you're doing on purpose- maybe the villain is too far gone and the party must deal with the idea that the only way to stop them is to kill them. Just don't pull that every time.