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A place where Game Masters, Dungeon Masters, Storytellers, Narrators, Referees (and etc) can gather and ask questions. Uncertain of where to take the story? Want to spice up your big baddie? Encounters? That player? Ask away!

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DnD homebrewing and campaign designing (ttrpg.network)

submitted 1 year ago by LilGuyPlasmoidDruid@ttrpg.network to c/askgamemasters@ttrpg.network

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Hey guys! I've been trying to work on some homebrew content for an idea of mine, it's gonna be very loosely horror based with plenty of room to goof off, but I also intend to mess around with and test alignments quite a bit with this campaign. I'm already working on a weapon that interacts with the choices the players make while using it (potentially cursing them if they become too evil), but I wondered if you guys had any other ideas on how to mess with or test alignment in a campaign. The thing with the weapon is that it can only really affect one person. I want to figure out a few more ways to mess with the others.

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[–] jmp242@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

I think you can basically just do alignment changes by feel - or at least I never had an exhaustive list of actions that did specific result to alignment.

If you want to formalize a bit, I did tend to use 2 line graphs, one for Lawful to Chaotic and one for Good to Evil, and have 9 points with neutral being in the middle. If I felt like someone took a major action or enough minor actions toward one of the poles, I'd move the marker for the player one notch in that direction. I did treat the in-between as the fuzzy area with no real effects till the indicator went to Neutral or one of the ends, in which case the alignment changed.

Thinking about this now, I realize I probably should have extended 4 points past the "extremes" - you know you can be lawful enough to obviously be a Lawful alignment, or you can be a rules lawyer bureaucrat who is past all reasonable levels of being fixated on the rules.

However, I also rarely had people continuously do stuff to force an alignment change. And of course, you might well not want alignment to be descriptive - someone could be that person who's Severus Snape or the other way does a Heel Turn after they get somewhere as seeming good. And presumably you'll have some insight into if the character is giving to charity because they believe it's the right thing to do or if they're doing it for the reputation only and otherwise don't care. At that point you can get all philosophical if you like.