Game Changer is our monthly advice column for new GMs and older GMs who aren’t afraid to learn something. Our resident GMing expert, Brian Suskind, draws from his vat of experience to let you know how it goes.
You might recognize Brian’s name from any of a slew of past Kobold Press products such as Campaign Builder: Castles & Crowns (a homebrew kit to build out the kingdoms in your own world) and the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault.
This months question comes to us from an unidentified asker:
Anonymous Player asks . . .
People online complain and argue about alignment, but I don’t understand what the big deal is. It seems like fun? What’s up with alignment?
Back in the long-ago times, alignment was a significant part of a major RPG that rhymes with Bludgeons & Flagons. It was designed to let players define their roleplaying and guide their character’s outlook on life. In addition, it was a handy, at-a-glance way for the GM to reference if a monster was an immediate bad guy or just a potential one. Alignment factored into other game elements as well, such as spellcasting and even languages. Did you know that, at one time, one of your languages could be the “language of your alignment”? (This article was originally written in neutral good, by the way.)
All of this brings us around to today’s question: What if you liked alignment? Did it bring something to the game? Is there a good replacement?
What Did Alignment Really Do?
Let’s boil it down to its original function. The alignment system was one of the earliest attempts to interject a sense of roleplaying into the game. TTRPGs evolved out of tabletop wargaming. Back then, the game was much more tactical than it is today. I know some folks believe that Truncheons & Hexagons today is crazy tactical and is nowhere near a “real” roleplaying game.
Well, you should have seen it before. Anyone try playing Chainmail or the White Box edition lately? Roleplaying was a minor add-on to the wargame experience in that era.
Over the years and editions, alignments became more enmeshed with other game mechanics. But at heart, it was intended to help roleplaying.
Can’t alignment still do that? Sure. Sort of. The recent version of Luncheons & Wagons kept it around. However, there are three reasons why most games (including Kobold’s own Tales of the Valiant RPG) dropped alignment.
- First, alignment has a suppressing effect on player agency and character complexity. People felt boxed in by having to be lawful good, for example. There’s nothing forcing you to exist in that box of course, but putting it on your character sheet has a powerful suggestive effect.
- Creators of many modern TTRPGs have consciously moved away from stereotyping and essentialism—the idea that a being’s essential nature is unchangeable. Labeling an orc as immutably “evil” was a blanket statement that many players didn’t like, and felt that it didn’t reflect their experience and the worlds they wanted to play in. Today’s designers try to separate morality from biology, making factors such as good and evil a function of choice rather than innate nature.
- Alignments haven’t really been given a good job in games. Once players took roleplaying into narrative player choices (more on that in a second), alignments didn’t have a mechanical function anymore. Today’s games, if they use them at all, have alignments as little signposts to make things easier for the GM.
So, if the purpose of alignment is to help you roleplay your characters, can we replace it with something else?
Heck yeah, we can! Here’s my way to do it.
Replacing Alignment with Motivation
When I think of what I would want in terms of roleplaying rules in something like the Tales of the Valiant game, it all comes down to motivation. I give my characters a one-to-three-word motivation concept. A motivation has three elements: emotion (how they feel), drive (what they do), and attitude (how they act).
For example, if your fighter’s whole family was kidnapped by an evil cult, their motivation might be Guilty (emotion) Vengeful (attitude) Investigator (drive). If your character is a mage who’s part of a secret society dedicated to defending the plane from demons, their motivation might be Obsessive (emotion) Secretive (attitude) Protector (drive).
Here’s a d10 table with options for each. None of this is exhaustive, but it’s a great quick reference, a place to get inspiration, or a tool for a GM to whip up an NPC on the fly.
Elements of Motivation
| d10 | Emotion | Attitude | Drive |
| 1 | Proud | Morose | Investigator |
| 2 | Inspired | Bold | Protection |
| 3 | Bitter | Devoted | Combatant |
| 4 | Determined | Loyal | Creator |
| 5 | Guilty | Vigilant | Hunter |
| 6 | Angry | Reckless | Collector |
| 7 | Suspicious | Calculating | Explorer |
| 8 | Insecure | Hopeful | Entertainer |
| 9 | Terrified | Secretive | Healer |
| 10 | Adrift | Noble | Champion |
Just because a character has a short-form motivation like this, that’s not their whole story. Use these as a place to start, not a hill to die on.
Using Motivation
Motivation in hand, some players might adhere to it rigorously. Others might occasionally refer to it. Some players completely ignore it. All of those methods are valid. But here are some pointers to get value out of motivation.
Drive and attitude color the decisions my characters make. When faced with a choice, I use those elements as a guide.
Reaction to events and people comes across first—attitude. A character with a Confrontational attitude reacts much differently to a bossy noble than someone with an Ingratiating attitude.
Drive then helps me think about how I act in response to the bossy noble. An Investigator might be ingratiating at first, but wants to know more about what the bossy noble is hiding. A Champion would go from an ingratiating start to leverage the relationship to advance their cause.
Emotion is used more in interaction with other players or in comments a character makes as they go about their drive and attitude. This builds up to personal roleplaying moments. I drop hints about Guilty feelings until an NPC or another PCs confronts my character with it.
Changing Motivation
The best part of motivation in my opinion is their mutability. You could change your alignment in classic Spongings & Taggings, but it took a ton of work by the rules and those rules were wishy-washy.
Motivations, on the other hand, last for as long as you need them to, and then you change whichever element you want into a new one. No spells or class restrictions rely on it, so you can just name it and claim it when it feels right. If the fighter with the kidnapped family manages to recover them, the character doesn’t have the same reason to keep a Guilty Vengeful Investigator motivation.
When that happens, a player can see what’s been happening in the campaign and develop a new motivation. Perhaps they keep the Vengeful thing because the cult leaders are still out there. But their emotion changes to Angry because of what the cult did to their loved ones. The drive shifts to Hunter as they seek out the cultists wherever they hide.
Over the course of a campaign, a character’s motivation might change several times, or it might never change. It all depends on the events of the story and the player’s decisions.
Are There Other Options?
Oh my, yes. Almost every TTRPG has some sort of roleplaying guideline, thus the “RP” part of TTRPG. Some lean into it, others only give it a thin veneer. Use it if it helps you embody your character the way you want.
You could even still use the Plungers & Placards alignment system if you really wanted to. Personally, I can have lots of fun playing a lawful good paladin who can rationalize virtually any action (even ones that are SO evil)!
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