Virtue: A Homebrew Alignment Variant

There’s an RPG blog carnival going on, and the topic is homebrew.  It’s certainly a broad topic.  To some extent, every campaign is homebrew.  Even if you try to run completely by the book, avoiding house rules, there are still rules interpretations to be made.  The interpretations of your table are not going to be the same as the interpretations made by another GM.  Roleplaying is an inherently creative activity, and even in a game sticking entirely to published sources — the official rulebooks and official modules and official everything else — differences of interpretation and of player character action and personality are going to lead to differences in play.

This is, I think, the biggest strength of roleplaying.  You can play Monopoly or Risk by the book, and it will be the same experience every time.  You can run through Keep on the Shadowfell as published, and it will be subtly different every time, because every GM will need to interpret and improvise, and they’ll do so in different ways.

We all homebrew.

What to write about, then?  I have numerous posts already that could qualify.  Anything in my Myth Direction series is homebrew based on mythology.  My posts about the dwarves and elves of my Galadria setting would qualify, too.  Then there’s my post Defining the Raven Queen, about setting an in-game background for the enigmatic fourth-edition deity.  But this is all old material, and the point’s to write something new.

I’d been considering a sort of mini-atlas of Galadria, but alignment seems to be the hot topic on RPG blogs lately.  Turtles All the Way Down discusses a deontological alignment system — loosely, one based on the concept of universal morality.  (There’s more to it than that, but deontology is somewhat tricky to explain, and really beyond the scope of this article.  Go read the post.  Ishmayl explains the approach.)  Philosophy of Games offers some related ideas about deontology vs. virtue ethics vs. consequentialism.

Meanwhile, a couple of other blogs are considering the alignment system as it stands in Dungeons & Dragons, and how it might be improved. A Hero Twice a Month discusses some of the problems faced by a group in trying to determine what sort of behavior, exactly, is “lawful good” — can a lawful good samurai cut off the hand of a thief because, in his society, that’s lawful and just?  Or is that an evil act?  I’ve seen similar arguments derail campaigns before — usually involving paladins and other alignment-restricted classes in older editions.  If the player of such a class has different ideas about what constitutes “good” or “law” than the game master has, this leads to problems.

In The Keep on the Gaming Lands, Mike Mearls presents a homebrew alignment system based on power sources — an arcane-aligned character, for instance, is interested in personal power or knowledge, and tends to be self-centered and self-assured.  A character’s actual power source and alignment need not match.  This is an interesting idea, and removed from the usual “continuum” model of alignments that most games that use the concept present.  Arcane alignment isn’t “more evil” or “more good” than divine or martial alignment — it just stands apart.

Another alternate system is presented by LOL for Initiative.  This one uses the same terminology as the basic D&D system.  The difference is that the “law” in “lawful good” arises not from personal ethics on a human scale, but from a divine law.  This fits in accordance with several historical worldviews, and might work well for a setting in which the king really does have divine right.  Unfortunately, it tends to fray at the edges in a polytheistic world, and it also dismisses the idea of human-centric (or sapient-centric, in a fantasy setting) secular ethics as valid, except insofar as they reflect a divine law.

…So much for the recap.

I’ve never been a big fan of the continuum structure of alignment.  I’ve used them as catch-alls to describe the basic outlook of a character, but they tend to make sense only in a world where morality and ethics are measured in absolute terms.  In my worlds, they tend to be more relative and culture-oriented.  The things the Kingdoms of Tir Eselyn consider lawful and good are not the same as the things the arctic elves consider lawful and good.

I got around this for a while by declaring that a character would choose an alignment based upon his own native culture.  A lawful good citizen of Tir Eselyn would be one who upheld law and good as they were defined in Tir Eselyn, even though those acts might be considered unlawful or evil by the arctic elves.  This mostly worked, but it led to some problems when spells like protection from evil were put into play.  If an arctic elf is good according to his culture but evil according to Tir Eselyn’s, does the spell provide a bonus against his attacks?

If it’s a divine spell, I can consider the god’s outlook — if he’s a patron of Tir Eselyn, then he considers the elf evil, so the spell works.  But what if it’s an arcane spell?  Arcane energy is a neutral force — it wouldn’t actively consider either the caster or the elf evil.  Does it respond to the caster’s morality?  If so, then these two could cast protection from evil against each other, and both spells would work.

This is actually not entirely a bad thing.  After all, very few people would think of themselves as evil.  Having morality-focused magic base itself on the caster’s definitions makes sense, from that perspective.  Only… with protection from evil, that isn’t a big deal, but with holy word, you’re looking at possibly killing dozens of peasants.  Is that a good act?  Even if they were “evil,” were they a threat sufficient to warrant outright slaughter?  And what about blasphemy, which affects nonevil creatures?  It can’t affect only those the caster thinks of as “not evil,” because that would (usually) include the caster himself!  And if we step back again and make it work on those considered “not evil” by the caster’s native culture, then it risks no longer being consistent with protection from evil, unless we do the same to that spell… and so on.

It did work out in the end, mind you.

Often, I’ll still have players write down something in the Alignment slot on the character sheet, just to give me a rough idea.  But for the actual definition of morality and ethics, I use a Virtue system I adapted from Nobilis, one of my all-time favorite RPGs.  (One that, incidentally, is getting a reprint by Eos Press later this year.  The earlier editions are very difficult to find now — and it’s an amazing game.  Don’t miss the re-release.)

In Nobilis, a character could choose a Virtue, a personality trait that was part of the core of his very being, so much so that he could never be forced to act in a way that contradicted that Virtue.  Nor could he be tricked into doing so.  A character with the Virtue of Loyal could never be made to betray an ally.  A character with the Virtue Liar could never be forced to tell the truth (even magically).  A character with the Virtue Greed could be prevented from stealing the crown jewels, but nothing could force him not to make the attempt.  There are other benefits to Virtues, too, and one restriction:  the character must always act in accordance with his Virtue.  Not all characters have Virtues, but it’s not uncommon, either.

You’ll notice, also, that not all Virtues are what we mere humans might consider virtuous.  Any personality trait can be a Virtue, including the vices.

Of course, in Nobilis, the player characters are godlike figures.  This sort of extreme Virtue is appropriate to such larger-than-life characters.  In a mortal game, it makes less sense to say that the characters are absolute paragons of their Virtue.

I use Virtues to define what’s most important to a character and to encourage roleplaying.  Each character chooses at least one Virtue they’re dedicated to.  This could be a personality trait, like Honorable or Vengeful.  It could be a mission statement, such as “Bring my parents’ killers to justice.”  I encourage everyone to choose at least one trait, though.  A character can have as many Virtues as the player wants to saddle him with.

Then I let them play.

Unlike in Nobilis, there’s no need for a character to follow his Virtue.  An Honest character can still choose to lie.  However, there are incentives.  The most obvious is that, any time a character would benefit from acting in contradiction to his Virtue but chooses not to, that character gains a story point at the end of the encounter.  (Story points can be used just like action points in my game, but they don’t go away during an extended rest.)

If your Honorable paladin flanks an enemy but refuses to attack from behind, forgoing the combat advantage bonus, that’s worth a story point.  If an Honest character doesn’t lie to the guards when it would be easier to do so, that’s a story point.  If a Greedy character takes something valuable even though it’s likely to get him into trouble later, that’s a story point.  If an Overconfident character jumps right into a dangerous situation, that’s a story point.

If at any point during the encounter the paladin realizes the party is in danger and takes the combat advantage in order to help them survive, or the Greedy character decides it’s prudent to pass on the opportunity this time, nothing untoward happens to them.  They just don’t receive the story point.

One important factor here is that the character does not lose the bonus because of the actions of others.  The Honorable paladin is still flanking, providing combat advantage to the rogue, and he doesn’t lose his story point if the rogue takes advantage of that — only if the paladin himself acts dishonorably.  The characters are not policemen for the rest of the party.  They need only live by their code — not push it on other people.

As a character develops, his personality may change.  The character can modify his Virtues between adventures by discussing the matter with the GM.  With the GM’s permission, the modification could take place during a session as well, though this shouldn’t be done in the middle of an encounter — wait for afterward, so as not to disrupt the scene.  There should be a very damatic reason for making such a change in mid-game — some form of character-redefining moment should have occurred.  If it’s a more gradual evolution, it’s best left to in between adventures, as the character spends some of his downtime reflecting on his beliefs.

There can be other benefits for Virtues, of course.  A character known for his Honesty might gain a +2 bonus to Diplomacy checks when the target is aware of his reputation (and values honesty).  An Overconfident character might get a +2 against fear effects.  Some form of small bonus is appropriate for a Virtue, but this applies only so long as the character consistently portrays that Virtue.  If the Overconfident character becomes hesitant, he loses the self-confidence which granted him that bonus.  If the Honest character starts to lie, he’ll quickly lose his reputation for honesty.  A single slip won’t lose the character the bonus (although it will negate it for that encounter), but repeated play will.

In this system, a character is “aligned” toward one or more Virtues, which reflect the traits he considers most important.  A character who had a hard life on the streets and trusts only himself might choose Greedy, Suspicious, and Cautious as Virtues.  A shining knight might be Honest, Honorable, and Courageous.  A stereotypical wizard’s Virtues might include “constantly searching for knowledge” and Proud.

In third edition, along with these changes, I retooled the alignment-based spells, generally making most of them function only against extraplanar creatures with the appropriate subtype.  To make up for that, I made other effects available to casters with appropriate Virtues.  A Courageous priest got access to various spells that protected against fear, including emotion.  A Greedy character got spells that detected treasures, revealed secret doors, and helped avoid traps and locks.  A Faithful character got variants fo the alignment-based spells that worked based on whether or not the targets worshipped the same deity.

This system meant that the characters’ own beliefs and personalities drove ethical and moral issues, rather than an artificial absolute morality imposerd by some external source.

Related posts:

1. Alignment Explained via Superheroes
2. Fox Magic: Arcane Feats
3. Ten Monsters I Love (But Rarely Use)
4. 4E from One Year In
5. Fox Magic: Inari