Alignment in D&D as a tool to determine how people will treat you


If your alignment in Dungeons & Dragons says that you are an "a-hole", the rest of the world will react accordingly.

Alignment is a general tool we use to describe how our characters in D&D are going to behave. It's an abstraction, and it is subject to nuances (two lawful characters can be lawful to different degrees, even though they will be sharing some trait).

But, a lawful character will "usually" behave accordingly. It doesn't mean that this character can't behave in a different way, but when not actively thinking, this will be the character's behavior.

Due to this, I think this is how people are going to see a character, in general.

So, when people interact with a lawful character, they will usually assume that he is somehow reliable: he will keep his word, get organized, show up when he is supposed to be; if he can't keep up to his word, he will see this as a major failure in his behavior.

They won't assume the same for a neutral character, who will try to stick to his promises, but who will not lose his sleep in case something goes south, and even less from a chaotic character.

Your friends or companions (i.e. the other adventurers) will put up with you no matter what, probably. But the rest of the world will not.

So, if your alignment is "a-hole", be prepared to be treated in that way.

 Image by Engin Akvurt

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trenitalia e gli Eurostar

Allora, alcuni Eurostar hanno la presa di corrente per collegare portatile e altre cose del genere. Altri invece non ce l'hanno. Come fare a saperlo? Si guarda sul sito di Trenitalia, ovvio... o no? No, non è ovvio. Questo, che secondo me è un servizio che dovrebbero pubblicizzare, non viene praticamente mai menzionato. Contenti loro.
Read more

Magicworks and patrons

Image
This is a follow-up both at my thoughts about money in Dungeons & Dragons vs money in our world and magic object as artwork. Instead of going down the path of personalizing magic objects (which was not the initial intention in the previous article, but you've to write what you have to write), I will pursue the idea of a magic object as artwork; let's call them magicworks. Making the parallel between an artwork and a magicwork, we can see that a magicwork should have:   a patron: the person or the entity who commissioned it, and paid for the magicwork to be created in the first place a craftsman: the spellcaster who actually imbued the magicwork with the magic a purpose: as we will see, a magicwork is usually an expensive endeavor, so there is going to be a purpose attached to it an owner: this could be the patron, but could be someone else, if the magicwork has been gifted, stolen, or lost I will use the patrons (mostly the names) from the group patrons listed in the Tasha&
Read more