Alignment is supposed to make fantasy roleplaying easier. You choose two words, write them on your character sheet, and continue with the adventure. The arrangement works surprisingly well until characters begin making decisions that don't fit neatly inside the boxes they've been given.
A Lawful Good hero can defy a corrupt ruler. A Chaotic Evil villain can display loyalty and courage toward trusted companions. A Neutral character can discover that refusing to choose still shapes events and carries consequences. The more closely you examine alignment, the less simple it becomes.
Alignments You Shouldn't Choose explores the nine classic alignments as tools for creating richer characters, sharper conflicts, and more thoughtful campaigns. Each chapter presents a deadpan warning against choosing an alignment, followed by twenty reasons to embrace it anyway. Along the way, the book examines justice, freedom, authority, ambition, compassion, selfishness, and the uncomfortable reality that moral questions rarely remain tidy for very long.
Part roleplaying guide and part philosophical exercise, this book invites players and game masters to move beyond labels and start asking more interesting questions. Readers may finish the book with a deeper appreciation for alignment and a lingering suspicion that the most difficult character to classify was themselves all along.
54 pages. PDF and epub files included.
Alignment is supposed to make fantasy roleplaying easier. You choose two words, write them on your character sheet, and continue with the adventure. The arrangement works surprisingly well until characters begin making decisions that don't fit neatly inside the boxes they've been given.
A Lawful Good hero can defy a corrupt ruler. A Chaotic Evil villain can display loyalty and courage toward trusted companions. A Neutral character can discover that refusing to choose still shapes events and carries consequences. The more closely you examine alignment, the less simple it becomes.
Alignments You Shouldn't Choose explores the nine classic alignments as tools for creating richer characters, sharper conflicts, and more thoughtful campaigns. Each chapter presents a deadpan warning against choosing an alignment, followed by twenty reasons to embrace it anyway. Along the way, the book examines justice, freedom, authority, ambition, compassion, selfishness, and the uncomfortable reality that moral questions rarely remain tidy for very long.
Part roleplaying guide and part philosophical exercise, this book invites players and game masters to move beyond labels and start asking more interesting questions. Readers may finish the book with a deeper appreciation for alignment and a lingering suspicion that the most difficult character to classify was themselves all along.
54 pages. PDF and epub files included.
