Why do you play your alignment?
hornash
Member Posts: 7
This is more an open question as to why people roleplay good/neutral/evil alignments.
I personally play a good alignment as, while I now they are just pixels and programs, I never feel right being a dick for the sake of it. I don't do it in real life and so I don't feel right doing it in a game. it just isn't me and i don't enjoy it.
Although the renegade path in mass effect is a lot more fun it isn't a bad guy. should any sequels be coming would people rather see a mass effect alignment system or stick with the classic model?
I personally play a good alignment as, while I now they are just pixels and programs, I never feel right being a dick for the sake of it. I don't do it in real life and so I don't feel right doing it in a game. it just isn't me and i don't enjoy it.
Although the renegade path in mass effect is a lot more fun it isn't a bad guy. should any sequels be coming would people rather see a mass effect alignment system or stick with the classic model?
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Comments
Neutral - I really like thieves and I'm more the Han Solo type so this is the alignment for me. Save the world, yeah, yeah, got it... how much money are we talking about? It makes for a good story too - you're drawn to evil by your blood and to good by Imoen and the others and eventually you realize that maybe you do care about the world after all... or that ruling it is your true destiny.
Evil - Pure sadistic evil characters don't work for me because I don't see the attraction in being a dick to everyone either. I like my evil characters to be charming scoundrels who cheerfully stab anyone who has loot, or warriors who live only for battle, or fallen heroes who embark on a quest for power because they think they need it to protect the ones they love. Maybe Imoen dies to Irenicus and you decide to show him what real revenge looks like, and you'll stop at nothing to get it. The imp familiar is really fun, as are Drizzt's scimitars.
I initially started playing Evil-aligned characters primarily because I realised all my favourite characters (barring the odd Mazzy or Haer'Dalis) were Evil, so I might as well give in and get with the programme. There's also a certain satisfaction I get from bucking the game's expectations. It wants me to be a hero, so I deliberately play a villain, or at least an anti-hero. It made me quite happy when I finished SoA and Ellesime noted that I was a hero to Suldanesselar, 'even if my name was associated with dark deeds elsewhere'. I have no idea what triggered that: reputation of alignment, perhaps, but it brought the flicker of a twisted smile to my face.
If i play 'as I would', I usually end up Neutral Good with True Neutral leanings, but that's also because most games reward good behaviour, and I'm genre savvy enough at this point to know that. I usually do that the first time I play a WRPG (exceptions being KotOR and KotOR 2, where I went full-on Darkside from the start). My initial Wardens, Hawkes, Shepards and my original Bhaalspawn were often little more than (frequently gender-swapped) self-inserts, and I considered their problems as if I was confronting them. But after a while that gets kinda dull, and I start to prefer to create characters that are not me and take them on their own journeys.
The first time I play as myself because I want to surprise myself. I want to shed a bit of light on who I am when faced with certain choices. Is mass brainwashing superior to destruction? What level of atrocity will I justify in the name of a cause I believe in? These are the types of choices that I like to be surprised by. But once I know about them they lose some of their impact, and so I create characters that would choose one or the other, or neither and then immerse myself in that character. I wanted a Bhaalspawn who poisons groves, wears armour made of people and doesn't think twice about sacrificing their oldest companion. Like I wanted a Warden who would force a noblewoman to murder her own son, give an army of golems to a (slightly) progressive tyrant and make Alistair to sacrifice his life purely out of spite because he dropped her after becoming king, and then go insane as a result until she finally disappeared.
I play Lawful Neutral because of the clause that's "follows the law OR your own personal code of ethics." It's summed up as "the Judge" for a reason. I like that it reflects a certain arrogance in the way I play it, hence why my sorcerer is LN. He looks around him and, with his high Int and Wis, makes his judgments. I like the flexibility it gives since you define your moral code. You don't have to be kind. your moral code can be more "the strong rule." It's your decision to make because you have the highest authority. Similarly, if someone's story touches your character's heart, or you think it's unjust, then you act on it. For a character with strong convictions, you try to shape the world to your perceptions through whatever means you want.
I like Neutral Evil for its similar flexibility. I get to be a cunning "villain with good PR" as the saying goes, so I'm not pigeonholed into the evil options. You get to be a clever manipulator who makes everyone around you like you while you dig closer to your goals, but you don't have to have any qualms for doing something bad so long as it serves your aims. It's like lawful evil in that it's the intelligent evil I like.
I play all evil alignments, with a slight preference for lawful and neutral (due to a preference for bards), but I don't make chaotic evil characters bloodthirsty psychopaths either. My chaotic evil charname thinks of himself as lawful and follows a (delusional) logic. To him, it makes sense. To the world, not so much. To Xzar, absolutely.
Also, outside books, Dale Cooper of Twin Peaks fame is decidedly Good.
There is something more satisfying than putting the smack down to Marl if that is what my character would do instead of powergaming the option to get more experience. Or siding with Edwin, or just watching Edwin and Dyna duke it out. Or killing the Feldposte thugs for Silke. Or my favorite, striking down Nalia's aunt (in front of her) when she insults you.
Robbing every house blind, or if I am lawful, not touching any chest that does not belong to me, even if I know it contains a bastard sword +1.
It creates better stories and better characters that I find myself more attached to if I play them a certain way and allows you to see many parts of the game you wouldn't experience otherwise.
I've never read those novels... But Dale Cooper made me immediately think of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully... two very interesting 'good' characters, but they don't translate well to a fantasy setting.
Just because someone is "good," even lawful good, doesn't mean that they can't be complex or have realistic characterization and flaws.
i play the alignment because its a role playing game. mass effects alignment system was horrible, shepard just did what he/she wanted when she/he wanted (i used female Shepard because its Dynaheir and that's the only reason why i never play male Shepard apart from the first time I played, I'm a guy and I'm not very good at pretending to be a woman, call me crazy but its true)
in any kind of roleplaying when your evil you don't think your evil, you are still the hero of your own life, which is why when i play evil (which is rare) i set a good goal and a dark path to get to it, for example. in P&P D&D at my hobby shop i made a moon elf necromancer who was neutral evil, he saw the undead as disgusting and a weak way to power and so started to worship Talona (the disease goddess) to make a plague to infect the world to make re-animation impossible. his spells mostly dealt with Debuffs and disease.
getting rid of all undead everywhere forever, good goal. a heroes goal, but an evil way of doing it. he is still the hero in his eyes. and in terms of roleplaying he would help anyone to help further his goal (which explains the neutral bit and the necromancy explains the evil bit and yet he is still a hero in theory)
Jeffrey Sinclair and John Sheridan in Babylon 5 (also Lennier, Marcus Cole, Susan Ivanova; G'Kar definitely has an alignment change from neutral to good)
Captain Picard in Star Trek TNG (and arguably the other captains and most of the crews, as their primary mission was exploration and peace)
The Mason Family in Falling Skies (though, in their case, boring and unrealistic really hits home, with the exception of Ben)
Those are always the characters I love most. Especially a good character with a tough dilemma or conflict of interest. Nothing is more inspiring or more beautiful than to watch a good character triumph in a tough situation.
There's a sentiment that I see quite often on the internet even if not expressed in so many words - that adults aren't allowed to like simple heroes and simple villains. As if it's a sign of immaturity or a simple mind. To me that's just ridiculous. As humans we want to take sides and feel good about the side we picked, so simplification is present in all our entertainment. I want to cheer for Frodo and Sam and not have them suddenly turn out to be scumbags at home. In a shooting game I want something to shoot without agonizing over the moral implications of every shot. If I watch a sport I'll pick one team to cheer for even though they're basically all the same. Real life is complicated, more complicated than you can imagine... and as adults it's nice to settle down into a world where everything is laid out for you and the right choice is clear and all that's left to do is kick some ass.
You speak the truth, real life mostly sucks. But if you just wanna relax and kick ass, you can do that with any alignment... This thread is about why people choose to be neutral or evil. And I choose them because they're always more interesting to me... same reason I usually always root for the villain in movies.
But even though I generally find neutrals the most interesting, and often root for the evil ones (in tropes, I'm a sucker for tragic villains and "then let me be evil" types), I don't think good characters are "boring and unrealistic". Benjamin Sisko knowingly doing the "wrong thing for the right reasons", John Sheridan opposing his government - both are scifi counterparts of paladins; warriors with a divine prophecy and destiny - that's all but boring and adds to depth of their "lawful goodness". You could as well say that evil characters have a tendency to be flat and twodimensional at best - but that also mainly goes for children's cartoons, where all characters aren't very deep.