I am “dissatisfied” with Alignment in DW. I can live with it, but I would rather have something that more ambiguous and narrative, like Motivation or Character Concept. Any suggestions?
I am “dissatisfied” with Alignment in DW.
I am “dissatisfied” with Alignment in DW.
Alignment is just a carrot to entice players to behave a certain way – their actions reflecting the character’s moral or ethical code.
It’s an easy hack. Throw it out, rename it, whatever. Same deal. When you do X, get XP.
There are a couple of people who have been replacing Alignment with Motivations or Drives. It may be a good idea to look for those, get some ideas how to extend the concept to the core classes.
What about alignment do you find dissatisfying?
Honestly, for the most part alignment moves are motivation, because they’re actual moves, not just two words on a piece of paper.
Check out Jacob Randolph’s Inverse World when it comes out – he’s basically spearheaded this switch.
Alignment in D&D is a funny thing because all it really does is a) allow you access or deny access to certain classes and b) tells the GM what magic items affect you in what ways (+2 vs evil, etc).
It doesn’t actually have any bearing on character behaviour except if you violate it, then there’s an XP penalty.
So we said “fuck it, let’s just reward people for playing their characters” we made alignment an “actionable” thing.
I would like something that is even more actionable and character descriptive at the same time – like Aspects in Fate. I am just fearful of adding even more moves and widgets to consider. Such dilemmas we gamers have! 🙂
How much action? Could you have PC’s simply write a bond with their current motivation?
Something like, “I must act with courage and win the heart yon faire maiden from the carnies.” for a short term one.
For longer ones you could have steps, “I must defeat Mr. Slammer the Pog Hoarder to continue my quest of stopping the 90’s from returning.”
Something less group quest like, though, since XP is awarded for the completion of quests.
We ran an inverse world with sky pirates, Motivation worked a lot better than Alignment in that setting
“I must defeat Mr. Slammer the Pog Hoarder to continue my quest of stopping the 90’s from returning.”
You have no idea how close this is to a DW game I played in.
To make alignment or motivation or whatever “work” it’s crucial that it’s something with a binary switch – did you do the thing it says on your sheet? It’d be really easy to model something like White Wolf’s Demeanor / Nature the same way.
Sage LaTorra Regale us! Pogs, pogs, pogs!
Elliott Doza: it was a fantasy world that had crossed-over with the real world. So the dungeon we delved into was part castle, part movie theater. Our bard was named Tiffany (with a heart over the i) with a keytar as her instrument. The wizard kept his spells on a palm pilot. It was pretty awesome.
Keytars are amazing! I just hope no one was caught in a “wazzuuuuuup?!” Budweiser loop.
I like the Palm Pilot idea. Bit high tech for 1983 campaign though. I know! The Speak & Spell grimoire.
Various periods of the real world had all crashed into the fantasy world. So we had palm pilots, keytars, and the mythical Ajax, all running around.
“Bop it, twist it!” for the fighter?
Sage LaTorra there’s a book series called young wizzards which eventually does this. They have whole line of magical computers that look like macs except that the logo is slightly different.
I like how it works.