Alternative Alignments, or how I learned to stop caring and embrace Imperialism
We all know the old axes of order-chaos and good-evil. Looking at them, however, I noticed a glaring flaw, namely what kind of an idiot would willingly follow something that is literally named evil. That being said, I believe that one may make their own alignments, and use them to make their settings better. Therefore, I present
Overly-specific alignments!
Because most people do not identify with things like law or chaos. They identify with belief systems, political ideologies and the similar. In example, if you took a bunch of Roman Patricians from the times of the late republic, they wouldn't be chaotic or lawful. They would be Republicans or Imperialists. To follow up on this example, let's outline these two alignments:
- Republicans believe in Tradition, Equality of Citizens, and Roman Supremacy
- Imperialists believe in Progress, Subjugation of Surrounding Countries and Cosmopolitanism (Note that this is a major oversimplification of late Roman Republic's politics) None of them are especially chaotic or lawful, all have some good and some bad points, and not all people rank anywhere on the Republican-to-Imperialist axis. It applies only to Roman Citizens - to the nearby Barbarians it would be just as strange as it is to us. That being said, these alignments may not be just political: they may be in relationship to various metaphysical principles, or gods.
In example, I present you with the Ork Alignment Chart:
- Soul Crushers believe in Domination, Cunning and Eternal Warfare. They worship Grog, who demands them to conquer other peoples and Marrow Drinkers and bring them as slaves to his temples. In return he grants them knowledge of their world and power to mislead the non-believers.
- Marrow Drinkers believe in Destruction, Determination and Obliteration of the Self. They worship Gorg, who demands them to bring mountains of skulls to his temples. In return he grants them youth, strength and vitality of their victims.
And so on and so forth. Regardless of how alien moralities are, they may be turned into dichotomies, or even threefold scales! In example, the scale of Flesh, Divine and Machine among the Immortality Seekers:
- The Shepherds of the Flesh believe in Adaptation, Unending Change and Evolution. They want to survive their world by constant change of their minds and bodies, and they use Carnomancy to change their very own being.
- The Seekers of the Divine believe in Eternity, Higher Forms and Power. They want to survive by becoming one with the realm of higher forms, and they use Semantomancy to come closer to the perfect Forms that they want to embody.
- The Creators of The Machine believe in Constants, Knowledge and Design. They want to survive by changing themselves into the pinnacle of the world, a being so perfect that it may not be opposed in any way - and one that may not change as it is already perfect. Then they intent to make the whole world follow their rules, using their knowledge of hidden mechanisms of the world.
TL;DR - I think that alignments are currently under-developed and underused, and that they may be made much better by changing the ways we apply them to the worlds we create. By making them more specific than just "good/evil" or "order/chaos" we can make them more nuanced and more interesting.