Thought of the Day... #2 - Is it worth being a bit of a "Jerk" about Alignment?

This meme is a total lie, P. Bubs is totally not Lawful Good by any stretch of the imagination... 

Listening to a recent Play on Target podcast on Character Behavior and Alignment while in the car and trying to move between a dozen reports at work and started thinking again about Alignment.

I have a pretty tortured history with Alignment and Morality in D&D and other Fantasy Heartbreakers, which is told partially through my previous (and often snarky, fair warning) posts on Alignment, as well as two of my character's from the Ginger Giant's games, the often equally hated (by other PCs, at least) Sid and Uwain.

What I'm thinking about now, is how much I should push players to play Alignment/Morality. In my Shattered World game, I made the decision to leave Alignment off, figuring that the Icons and NPCs would be able to enforce any moral issues I decide to make an issue of.

Now, I'm gearing up to start running Out of the Abyss with my Sunday group, and I'm wondering how much I should enforce their alignment. Do I just have them choose a few Ideals from the D&D 5e Backgrounds? Do I try and write up something like the Dungeon World Alignments, which seems like time I could spend on doing other prep for Out of the Abyss (which is incredibly prep heavy for a DM already) or for my two other ongoing games or for my upcoming Dread one shot. Or I could try and steal the Noble, Fear and Rage Passions from Unknown Armies? Do I just admit that of my playing group it seems like I'm the only one who feels like Alignment is an important part of the game and let my players choose various Good or Neutral alignments as they wish without trying to enforce "alignment" morality and keeping my mouth shut when "good" characters decide to be cruel or dishonest because they think they can get away with it?

One thought I have is to reward players who play close to the alignment they put on their sheet by giving them a mechanical boost against Madness, which will be a huge part of Out of the Abyss, but I also need to read the Madness section of the 5e DMG again and decide how by the book I want to go with Madness or how much I want to change for ease of play and/or avoid the Malkavian problem of people playing insanity as "wacky". But then, if we don't define alignments well, it becomes more of a case of "are you playing that alignment the way Zack imagines it?"

In any case, the podcast has it in my mind again, that I really do wish I could have each PC commit to a moral code they would hold to, more like Vampire morality paths than D&D's alignments, but I know that is utterly unfeasible to try and pry that out of most players.

Further complicating things, in Al-Qadim Church, I'm playing an Evil priestess of a Chaotic Evil goddess, Ragarra, and I find myself thinking that I need to work with Thomas to come up with a good well-written code of ethics to abide by. Last session there was a moment where one of the other players went with a very "traditional" D&D Heroic Good impulse to risk his PC and the party save a fairly helpless NPC and my PC argued against it and almost ordered him not to, as if the NPC was weak enough to die, then that was that and he should be left to die in the river or re-captured and murdered by gnolls. Now, my problem is when I play non-good characters, I tend to think a lot more about what code of ethics/behavior they actually hold to, which I haven't really done yet with Thema.

Anyway, this has gotten way long for what was supposed to be a quick "Thought of the Day" but y'all can consider it as an open thread to discuss Alignment with me.

True Tomb of Isidore Philokrates - Notes and Loot

Here for your edification are the notes I ran my planned Extra Life session, The True Tomb of Isidore Philokrates off of...

• Notes/Adventure Outline
• Loot Given out in game 
• I printed these so that when I gave treasure to the PCs they could only see the front and had to decide if they wanted to risk opening it to see the potential consequences.
• PC Love Letters/Magic Items
• The live-tweet stream for the game.
• The map I based the dungeon on, Dyson's Crypt of the Child Kings

Thanks again to everyone who donated to my Extra Life page and all of the players, as well as James and the Ginger Giant for organizing the event.

From the Depths of the Lair of the Ginger Giant

A long "lost" podcast recently recovered from the depths of the Ginger Giant's lair.  In it we discuss our plans for co-DMing his Type IV D&D campaign.

Antagonist Relations Episode Nine: Best Laid Plans

Podcastery

Apparently I was tricked into podcasting... but the joke's on the Ginger Giant because I have schemes now... You can go check it out here: http://citizensmusings.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-insecurity-blanket-podcast-episode.html We discuss a recent 4E D&D game as well as the first Apocalypse World game I've had the pleasure of running.

Uwain the Betrayed: Speechification

Why, yes, I'm the kind of crazy SOB who'd write up a speech for his D&D character to deliver... I've been waiting for months to have Uwain give this speech, and finally, tomorrow, I shall have that chance...  The game left off last time with my former PC, the now NPC, Sid (referenced below as "That Abomination", sending abominations to kill the PCs, this would be the speech Uwain would give immediately after the fight.

Serious Business, Character Business

The Monarch: " (sighing) Jollyrancher82, never get henchmen.''

Jollyrancher82: "You know, that's not my real name.''

The Monarch: "Well, how was I supposed to know? I used my real name.''

Jollyrancher82: "I just thought, you know... "The Monarch," I thought you were into cosplay...''

The Monarch: "Real name! And I am into costumed business, not costumed play."

 The above quote has very little to do with this post, but it does encapsulate how serious I am about Character Business.  Not business in the sense of Neckties and Profit-Margins, but business in the theatrical sense, that is:

9. An incidental action performed by an actor on the stage to fill a pause between lines or to provide interesting detail.
 14. (Performing Arts / Theatre) Also called stage business Theatre an incidental action, such as lighting a pipe, performed by an actor for dramatic effect (http://thefreedictionary.com/business)

Character Business is one of the things that can make or break a game for me.  PCs with good character business can rescue a dreary plot and if done well can make a good game great.

Uwain the Betrayed - Introduction and Goals

So I'm gearing up to re-join Citizen Ben's monthly 4E D&D campaign after taking a short sanity regaining break.  Previously I had been playing Isidore (Sid) Philokales, a crazy Ardent (psychic healer for those not fluent in the more obscure 4E classes) who was devoted to the worship of a stellar entity that he believed would come and cleanse the world in a burning apocalypse.  For various reasons, mostly because he was insane and none of the rest of the party shared his apocalyptic goals, it became clear to me that it was time to turn Sid over to Ben to use an NPC.  After some thought, I decided that I wanted to play a character who could become the moral center of the game (some discussion of the game and its lack of a moral center can be found in my The Face vs The Captain vs Individual Impulsiveness - Party Leaders in RPGs post) and Uwain, a Paladin of the Raven Queen, a former Cindersoul Genasi raised as a Revenant, was born...