What do you guys think about including alignment in single player RPGs? Im talking about the traditional D&D model with a Lawful<->Neutral<->Chaotic axis and a Good<->Neutral<->Evil axis. I might make the positions more fine grained than that if I used it but I'm wondering what you guys think could be done with it in modern games. One note, If I used it, I would have player actions control your position and dialogue options available be based on your current position. It gets to messy to allow a full range of dialogue options with the player using them to pick alignment.

So did no one really care about using D&D style alignments in current generation RPGs? 119 views is a lot for no replies...

Well, one-dimensional alignment systems seem to be fairly popular in modern single-player RPGs - Fable 2 had its good/evil (or feared/respected) mechanic and Mass Effect has its "paragon"/"renegade" system (which is more akin to lawful/chaotic than good/evil).

However, it doesn't seem that two or n-dimensional alignment schemes are popular in mainstream single player RPGs these days. Perhaps this is because introducing another axis results in a potentially exponential increase in the number of dialogue and story options which need to be provided in order to support the system. Since content creation is no mean feat and comes at a considerable cost it is understandable that, in the mainstream at least, such systems are neglected.

I have very little experience playing D&D style RPGs with such alignment systems, and so I can't really offer much insight into how it might be applied today.

Quote:Original post by WavyVirus
Well, one-dimensional alignment systems seem to be fairly popular in modern single-player RPGs - Fable 2 had its good/evil (or feared/respected) mechanic and Mass Effect has its "paragon"/"renegade" system (which is more akin to lawful/chaotic than good/evil).

However, it doesn't seem that two or n-dimensional alignment schemes are popular in mainstream single player RPGs these days. Perhaps this is because introducing another axis results in a potentially exponential increase in the number of dialogue and story options which need to be provided in order to support the system. Since content creation is no mean feat and comes at a considerable cost it is understandable that, in the mainstream at least, such systems are neglected.

Pretty much, the in game choices have to be shallow to avoid having to create two separate games. You could try creating something similar to a rouge-like that relies on procedural content but even then it would be hard to simulate something like a character that's evil but in a less blunt way than Vlad the impaler.

Well I'm glad to see some helpful comments now at least.

One thing I am thinking may be an issue is really dividing the options properly. In most cases, evil acts are outlawed, so for instance, while I may say that stealing is chaotic but not evil, murder is both, torture is both, in fact, most evil acts are both. Good and lawful are hard for another reason. Doing good is easy, but being lawful is simply not breaking the law. Unless I provide a way to uphold the law in a contrived way, its difficult to measure lawfulness.

Assuming that somehow the actions that determine this could be worked out though, its influence should be in the flavor of the dialogue options available and in some of the options you are given. This is helped in that I have no intention of voicing the dialogue and will be lucky to have vocal sound effects of any good quality. At such a point it then becomes writing and creativity, and not voice recording and money to pay for it that would limit me.

Since this is single player, I don't need to worry about disharmonious parties, and even so, I could simply have party member come and go depending on how far you are from them with some stock responses about how far you are from their alignment (and not what alignment you are.) As I say though, this is single player.


Anyway, these are all some pretty big hurtles in making it workable. I was hoping for another way for the player to act out his character and describe his personality in a way the game world could react to. I've been reading about low level stories and such an alignment system basically becomes a way to think of the game keeping track of the overall pattern of actions you follow. Sure the game can react to a single instance of a house being robbed, but how does it react to your long term pattern of chaotic behavior?

If that were a realized goal though, I'm not sure this particular alignment system or any alignment system is the way to go about it. Perhaps a trait system...

I think at this point I must agree that this alignment system and probably most would not be workable unless the player were specifically choosing it himself. In almost any system it would seem that there is a large risk of the player feeling the whole system is very black and white, and even too systematic.


Something that occurred to me when thinking about measuring lawfulness though, what if the system just measured the presence or absence of specific traits.
Selfishness, altruism, etc. could be a list of traits that the player selects when he starts the character and that is communicated through the game. Would this or soem other system add much to the play experience?

Here's my beef with quantified morality systems: they were fine in traditional roleplaying games, because the point of the game was to role play, and the players are expected to conform to the characters. In videogames, the main character is almost always a surrogate for the player, and so the character conforms to the player. A lot of the mechanics do not translate. The game with the best morality system I've encountered yet is Ultima IV, and I'd still say that's far from ideal. This isn't to say you can't have roleplaying morality in a game, but it would have to be a "traditional" roleplaying game instead of a "videogame" roleplaying game to fit in properly.

That said, the best way to go about it is to leave morality up to the player, and just have the world react based on what they can know. If you kill someone in secret, it does not have a direct impact on their impression of you. If you hurt a guy's enemy, even if the victim don't deserve it, the guy might like you better. If you help someone, they might not be able to reward you. If you steal from someone and are caught, they might tell others and you may eventually get a reputation as a thief, possibly more or less than you deserve depending on the person.

In short, don't use a morality system, but make characters act human and not like videogame NPCs. Players will project their own morality, which is going to be more effective than a "good vs evil" bar.