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.

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Alignment Explained via Superheroes

These motivational posters are surprisingly apt.  I like the conceit here:  the superheroes (and villains) are, for the most part, pretty well-known figures, which makes this an easy encapsulation of the D&D alignment system.  The one prior to fourth-edition, at any rate.

My favorite part is the quote chosen for each one.  He’s a superhero; he’s a political philosopher.  They Fight Crime.

It’s kind of an old post, but I just stumbled upon a link to it.